I’ve been writing about Near Death Experience for a while now, and even with a handful of their releases under my pen, I would be hard pushed to describe succinctly what they do. I might drop words like soulful and funky, psychedelic and groovesome, but since each song seems to mix and match those elements in varying amounts, and as their sonic ship ebbs and flows on the tides between those ports, you can’t really pinpoint a signature style. Perhaps groovesome is the only thing that ties their music together. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Who wants merely more of the same?
That’s not to say that theirs isn’t a unique and identifiable sound; familiar, yes, but still often unexpected and unsecond-guessable. “Flight” oozes the psychedelic twilight that often drives their music, rising from spacious groove to sax-soaked sonic highs, running between understated acoustica and lush cinematic soulscapes.
It is a song of melodic bass lines, rhythmic six-strings, mellifluous saxophones and hazy vocal textures, of understatement and expression, somehow deft and underplayed yet all-consuming and anthemic. The trick, it would seem, is that every instrument contributes gossamer-thin, delicately constructed sheens that, when taken as a whole, create the song’s collective sonic weight. This is definitely a team effort.
And those shimmering layers mean that the sonic hue is ever-changing as the light catches each and every note and chord, every instrument in various combinations, like a gem being held up to the light, its colors kaleidoscopic and shifting yet consistent and beguiling.
Rinse, funk, repeat? Absolutely!
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