“Effortlessly straddling ambient, hip hop and folk styles, [the sound] blurs the line between personal intimacy and wide open space, channelling that strange nocturnal headspace where everything is at once immediate and reflective.” So we wrote of Edmonton’s Loic Moonmattress when covering EP Sleepless in Eugene back in January. A three-song release which found “its narrator in a kind of limbo,” we continued, “between youth and adulthood, love and loneliness, consciousness and dreams.”
Now Loic Moonmattress has returned to see out the year with another EP, Last Nostalgia, and as the title suggests, the collection builds upon the themes of its predecessor to explore ideas of memory and fondness. Again drawing upon a diverse range of influences, the songs combine lush ambient textures with hip hop and bedroom pop sensibilities to weave soundscapes at once expansive and intimate, delving into the small, personal moments to excavate the full warmth within.
The title track of the EP is a great place to jump in. A perfect example of the patient, slow-moving style, with Loic Moonmattress taking the time to examine a specific moment in all of its varied, wistful texture. “[It’s] a song about the clarity, overwhelm, and sense of finality that comes with looking backward on era of ones life that has just come to pass,” the artist describes. The result is something touching, melancholic and more than a match for its title. An attempt to preserve a fleeting moment in sound.