Ears Wide Open: Mating Ritual

Kevin Bronson on January 12th, 2015

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In 2013, brother duo Pacific Air culminated a couple years of work by releasing “Stop Talking,” a summer-breezy album of buoyant electro that languished amid a wave of similar-sounding music. With brother Taylor having put music on hold to pursue his education, Ryan Marshall Lawhon has carried on as Mating Ritual, having released a trickle of Hype Machine-worthy (as almost anything electro is these days) tracks that reveal a different temperament. Here, Lawhon says, having “spent the better part of a year (mostly) by myself working in a dark cave in the Valley,” he conveys his lonerisms via sweet melodies, rich hooks and soupy textures. Of course, there’s no shortage of synth-saturated brooding these days either, and despite its recurring themes, so much electro-pop ends up having the emotional heft of a laboratory experiment. Mating Ritual is trying to elevate, with mixed results.

||| Stream: “Toxins”