Isa Gordon - For You Only (Optimo Music)

Glasgow based producer Isa Gordon sculpts sound and beats into distinct universes on her mind bending debut LP for Optimo Music

Isa Gordon’s collaborative project Resili released their digital album Cups on Optimo Music back in early 2020. Its quietly subversive electronic beatscapes went rather under the radar in a year that shifted horribly underneath our feet, but JD Twitch’s belief in Glasgow based producer Gordon is surely set to pay off with her stunningly original solo debut LP For You Only. Delivering 12 tracks in around 35 minutes, Gordon inhabits distinct musical universes that add up to much more than the complex mathematics of their parts.

“Second Love” drifts into your consciousness with distant echoes of “You Got the Love” before pirouetting to stark modernism with sharply-angled strings against a background of distressed electronica. “A Coin in the Bush” then appears to reset matters, its last night on earth ambience warping into folkloric terrain that makes you feel as if you are attending a ceilidh run by Spiral Tribe. Ancient future programming suitable for a mashup of Morvern Callar and The Wicker Man perhaps, but don’t expect Gordon to settle into any particular mode. It is apparent that her sound world has arrived fully formed on For You Only, accommodating a multitude of ideas under a unifying vision.

The fragile, delightful piano of “Joanna Picollo” belies a darkness underneath, suggesting technological awakenings disturbing the natural order. There’s something about it that brings to mind The Pastels’ Last Great Wilderness soundtrack, although particular sonic similarities might not be apparent. At the midway point, post-rave anti-anthem “Three Airs” could be a brighter version of Burial or a celestial Boards of Canada. Breaks crunch and beats are dragged out into miniature infinities like mirrors within mirrors. “Blue Fire” then discombobulates with processed psyche guitar lines before enacting a man machine breakdown. The pitched and chopped voices emerge and disappear as if traveling pneumatic tubes of unknown, possibly sinister purpose.

Centrepiece “For You Only” pushes Matthew Herbert down the stairs as Gordon innovates with everything beyond the kitchen sink percussion. It sizzles and thrives just as it threatens to unravel but never does. This is next level avant-garde bass music that brilliantly showcases this artist’s unique production abilities. Meanwhile, interstellar logs spool down the screen of a lone console as some hidden horror haunts the corridors of “Stranger than Disguise”, a mood underpinned by tough, eccentric beats. But it’s not all gloom here, as there’s a lightness of touch at the controls, shifting emotional resonances around competing spheres. Closer “Parting Game” ramps up the spacey synthscapes and metallic percussion, powering into an intermittently thumping experimental progressive groover. Imagine “Xpander” by Sasha (and Charlie May) reworked from the ground up by Beatrice Dillon, an idea that merely hints at Isa Gordon’s command of the language of outsider club culture and advanced home listening.

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