2024 Fringe Records - Bubble Love s/t
This is the first record in the "fringe" category that I'm posting in my will-probably-take-all-of-2025 2024 retrospective, so I'll explain briefly that this category represents stuff that I had some vague appreciation for but never quite "took to" in 2024. (For those keeping track, that makes the current category list for 2024 records: "Safe Bets", "You Could Make a Case For", and "The Fringe"; there are 6 more categories making up my notes that I have yet to write any reviews from). I'll be writing about "fringe" records either because they became more important to me in the months that followed or because I still have some nagging idea that there's something there, even if I never found myself listening to the album regularly. This first one is a case where I've actually found myself reaching for it more in the first few months of 2025!
https://bubblelove.bandcamp.com/album/bubble-love
Bubble Love took a while to grow on me because I wanted more Tread and this is not that–but of course it's not, it's even released under a different name! Tread's tracks had this cool forward momentum to them; they were headed somewhere and I was getting to hear what happened along the way. This one in contrast simmers, perhaps giving the DJ the reins with any track selection to stay somewhere for a moment before their work takes people on to the next destination. The sampling simultaneously feels blunt and like a more restrained DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ, and there are some gloriously 90s steel drum and panflute patches that sound like they come from a CD-ROM where a cartoon dog teaches you chemistry concepts. The "Love"/"Hate" combo is very good back to back, but I'm partial to "Ugly"