Black Light Smoke is readying the release of The Early Years via Cut Mistake Music on March 26th. Produced and mixed in Nashville by Black Light Smoke’s Jordan Lieb and Cut Mistake’s Connor Whiriskey during 2017’s full solar eclipse, the album draws together a collection of tracks written at the project’s formative beginning. With most of the songs written in 2010, The Early Years reflects Lieb’s seminal influences with song’s drawing inspiration from shoegaze and post-punk, as well genres we might associate more closely with Black Light Smoke’s subsequent output such as EBM, house, and techno.
The Early Years was initially laid down on a four-track using unconventional recording techniques and Lieb’s collection of trashy guitar amps and obscure petals. Reflective of this formative period in the musician’s development, its experimental approach is a testament to the artist’s varied influences and evidence of where and how these different genres meet and come together. Black Light Smoke’s development, then, might be seen as similar to that of the late ’70s and early-’80s, when the urge for further artistic experimentation eventually led post-punk bands from the rock stage to the dance floor.
On “Burn,” we find Lieb exploring the moody side of synth-pop. Like a lost gem reissued by Minimal Wave or Medical Records, its unassuming and homebrewed charms are only enhanced by the track’s sense of isolation and loss. Here, pained self-reflection and limited sonic means stand against the odds as they combine in a lonely but heroic act of creation.
