Album Review: Soeneido – Into Other Dimensions
Album Review: SOENEIDO - Into Other Dimensions
October 13, 2021
Tshego Letsoalo
Contributing writer Tshego Letsoalo reviews Oakland artist SOENEIDO’s newest release, Into Other Dimensions.“The six-track EP evokes the stretching and contracting of time with nostalgic breakbeats and jungle basslines to keep us grounded, paired with futuristic effects, elements of techno, and synths that point us to an unknown future.”
Album artwork via Bandcamp
One of the effects of this wild past year is the re-imagining of the idea of time and how it moves and how we operate within it. Time stretched on while we were stuck during the first days of the lockdowns, and time also seems to have sped up now that we’re almost suddenly two years away from 2020. Time has been split in our minds to all the different dimensions of all the things that could have been – all the shows and parties that didn’t happen, all the music and art that didn’t get made, they’re all out there in parallel universes.
Fortunately for us on this plane, Oakland electronic artist Soeneido has created an aural highway to these other universes with his latest offering, Into Other Dimensions. The six-track EP evokes the stretching and contracting of time with nostalgic breakbeats and jungle basslines to keep us grounded, paired with futuristic effects, elements of techno, and synths that point us to an unknown future. The straight-up danceability of each of the tracks puts us into those other dimensions we’ve been without for so long – dancefloors where bodies exist together as a single organism made of all the cells moving to the music.
The third track on the album, called “Our Storm,” uses a sample from the 1984 movie Dune like a call to all the dancefloor warriors and everyone who feels like the world right now is in need of a shake-up. The track immediately following, “Swift,” builds on that urgency with a faster tempo and anxious synthesizers.
“Hyper Real” is the standout with its rooted jungle bassline and a spell-like melody at the top. It shifts through the highs and lows of the syncopated beat and the melody on its own, then bursts into a surprise keyboard break with a four-to-the floor march that is likely to cause bodily chaos on the dancefloor.
Into Other Dimensions is a rich and textured ride through the universe where a lot of us would like to be right now – one where the dancefloor never left. And while it may be a bit longer until we’re in the heaven of a sweaty dancefloor and feeling the groove with a hundred strangers, we’ve got Soeneido’s music to take us into those dimensions.
Into Other Dimensions is available for download and limited-edition cassette tape on Bandcamp.
Tshego is a South African and freelance writer living in Oakland. She absolutely believes God is a DJ.