GEM FM
Sonic Boom
Fort Lauterdale, United States
Gen FM’s latest album, ‘Sonic Boom,’ is a spiralling and hypnotic instrumental album that plays with light, tone and texture to deliver melodies and soundscapes you won’t find anywhere else. The sound of ‘Sonic Boom’ comes from various places, it feels influenced by pop in some way you can’t put your finger on; jazz comes through hard with its various beat timings and melodic fingerprints, but it doesn’t take over, I wouldn’t call this a jazz album. What I would call ‘Sonic Boom’ is an experimental dive into contemporary music, taking apart its stitches and letting the creativity at its heart bleed out into the ether. It's a solid sound and one that reaches as far as it can without breaking down. Gen FM is stood at the precipice of the new musical age, calling us all to follow.
With so many songs on the album you really get a feel for what ‘Sonic Boom’ is trying to say. It's a chill sound at times, one that bids you sit back and relax, take the day as it comes and listen to the waves. Songs like ‘Serrated,’ ‘4banger’ and ‘Slide On Down’ rise and fall in breaths, their musicality flows like a river, slowly eroding the banks of new sound and letting its influence roll into the tide, changing it and frothing with the motion. It leads to sounds that are synth-heavy, full of bass and instructing percussion that ups tempo in times of duress and backs off when the tone cools. A key feature of all of these tracks is a synth woodwind sound, akin to an oboe or a horn. It patters on the melody and keeps the songs jovial, it's a polka texture and one that works so well against the new wave instrumental in the back.
But the vibe doesn’t keep its head down for long, no it barks, bites and it snarls when you become contented. ‘SwagR’ is deep, dark and punky. The song bursts out of cyberpunk clubs as you speed past on a hovercycle. It keeps those horn sounds but the attitude is different, it's attentive and bold and uplifting. ‘RazL’ takes what we have heard before and adds some jazzy and hot-foot beats. It's afro, it’s rasta and it's a fast-paced good time. The rolls of the toms in the back are somehow nostalgic even though they feel as if they come from the future. All at once you are comforted and sent forwards at a blazing speed to places you never knew you would get to see.
Gen FM’s ‘Sonic Boom’ is a vibrant and tasty look into our current music space through the lens of instrumental jazz fusion. Take pop, crush it up, nuke it and give it a trumpet. You will arrive at a sound that is wholly its own, yet yearns for what it came from. It's a love song, the whole album, for pop as it is, was, and always will be. Simply, divergent.