Album Review – Leave Nelson B. “3.X Sinners”

From what I can gather, enigmatic electronic artist Leave Nelson B. really wants to be left the hell alone. Existing in the Lonely Ghost Records universe, Nelson makes instrumental, sample prone, beat driven music from his bedroom, broadcast to the corners of the internet. It’s these corners, the forgotten or overlooked nooks and crannies, that we at LSPR like to explore, so let’s do just that on his newest album “3.X Sinners”:

Catching our attention right away on “(free)Done” Nelson’s use of police siren samples and repetitive clipped vocal phrase entrance the listener and establish a smooth and hooky backdrop. This is followed up immediately with “Hope” in a similar fashion, a jazz sample loop plus raw and real drums allow the dialogue moments to float in and out, creating more than just “mood” music without needing vocal melodies for it to feel like “pop” music. “Hope” especially reminds me of something you’d hear from Milo/Scallops Hotel/R.A.P Ferreira (which is perfect beat music to me) this track is simultaneously visceral and heady.

“Deacon Jones” is another track that personifies what Leave Nelson B. is all about; intimate and minimal, bric-a-brac almost meets a video-gamey type of production, while still offering something 21st century and mind-consumingly maximalist, staying complex and rhythmic throughout. Or take the psuedo-jazz meets sambo funk “Wallace” as a great example of what Nelson can do.. well literally whatever Nelson wants to. It’s refreshing when an artist can take any style and filter, transmogrify, change and rearrange it into their own world, into the vision they have in their head, and make it sound exactly like themselves. Nelson has an incredible knack for that and for finding the old world influences we grew up with and turning them into whatever he’d like us to hear, as long as it sounds fresh.

I don’t want to over sell or over complicate Nelson’s music, because to a large extent what you get is what you hear, and this certainly is instrumental music to feel good to. But where it really excels is how it can simultaneously feel “internet” and “home-grown”, not just existing to get clicks or to absent-mindedly tune out to, but to pique your curiosity, to inspire the old with the new, to provoke and make the listener wonder “what else is out there in this giant ocean of music that I’m missing out on that’s this good?” Because every town, every corner of the internet probably has a Leave Nelson B. but none of them are the real Leave Nelson B.