HIGHER GROUND: A Deeper Look Inside ‘Dual Fusion Unity’, The First Pretty Lights Studio EP In A Decade [B.Getz on L4LM]
photo: Brittany Teuber on Pretty Lights Facebook
originally published via Live For Live Music
To most people on planet earth, Wednesday, September 25th 2024 seemed like your garden-variety, early-autumn hump day. Then, seemingly on a whim, Pretty Lights mastermind Derek Vincent Smith decided to unveil a sly surprise: Dual Fusion Unity, a gift for the culture he helped create, geared specifically toward the dedicated minions waiting quasi-patiently for his first collection of original studio music in roughly a decade.
While the man behind the movement famously said “soon” some time ago, I’m not sure anybody imagined it would be quite this long. The delayed document finally arrived in the peculiar form of Dual Fusion Unity. The five-song EP features a curated selection of the original songs Pretty Lights has steadily introduced to the faithful via the Soundship Spacesystem Tour, Smith and company’s monumental 2023 comeback campaign after five years away featuring a new-look, five-piece live band, and 2024’s in-progress Check Your Vector trek, which burned down everything from Bonnaroo to Bethel and beyond this past summer.
After a few weeks of repeated spins, my snap reaction and Spidey senses tell me that this EP is merely an appetizer, whetting appetites while teasing a multi-course meal still on the stove. To these ears, Dual Fusion Unity feels almost like a mixtape offering, a tasty, hot plate to build buzz and hold us over until the feast. Think of it like one of the album samplers that labels would send to radio stations and journalists back in the day for the purposes of taking a city or region’s temperature.
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Naturally, this rollout was not your standard-issue situation. As the Pretty Lights Soundship Spacesystem squadron remained busy hyping up this month’s two-night stand in Sin City, if one squinted just right, there was more than meets the eye(con).
Pretty Lights didn’t upload the Dual Fusion Unity tracks to digital streaming services nor offer them on YouTube or Bandcamp, as has become the industry norm in the decade since his last set of tunes (2014’s Hidden Shades EP, which extrapolated his last full-length LP, 2013’s A Color Map of the Sun). Possibly taking a cue from jam titans of yesterday and today, along with numerous artists in other genres, Derek Vincent Smith leaned into the intimate, potent connection between him and his fanbase.
The PL team conceived and implemented a throwback treasure hunt for fans to seek out the long-awaited new music. A series of secret clues hidden in concert promos, secret extensions on a throwback telephone hotline, and esoteric riddles ultimately led would-be listeners to a “secret” password that unlocked an anachronistic Winamp media player loaded with the five fresh Pretty Lights tunes—all seemingly just to “inspire delight.” For a breakdown of the complete process to locate and listen to the EP on the day it dropped, go here.
Though initially this appeared a maddening method to drop it like it’s hot, with a few weeks in the rearview mirror, the quirky puzzle feels more aligned with the ways in which this project and label have always distributed their work. Dating back to 2006, Pretty Lights Music was among the first imprints to revolutionize the game by delivering sample-based sound-art for free, dealt direct-to-consumer by way of a dedicated artist/label website and a tidal wave of word of mouth. In the wake of PLM’s exponential electro-soul explosion, many creatives and collectives followed suit. If we are being honest, things haven’t really been done the same way since.
One had to be tapped into the scene, or following PL socials, to get word of what was going down on September 27th. Your humble narrator happened to be at a Lettuce show in Red Bank, NJ later that Wednesday night, and a loyal PL fan in the crowd hipped me to the game. By that point, sleuths had aggregated the tracks into a zip file for easy download and devouring, and I spent the next week introducing this EP to several people during car rides on LETT tour.
Even with those early listens, unpacking the music on Dual Fusion Unity is an unconventional assignment. There was no official announcement accompanying the “hot drop,” no press release, no “product description” on a streaming site, no liner notes, no news update on the Pretty Lights website, (still) no public comments by Derek or the rest of the band. For all the years of “soon” memes and PLF melts, the entire EP event felt like a “fly by the seat of your JNCOs” situation— that is to say, fairly spur-of-the-moment.
All things considered, I’m basically just going off vibes here. Any red herrings I might discern below came via attentively viewing/listening to/dissecting the new tracks and both Soundship Spacesystem tours, which the Pretty Lights team benevolently livestreams on Twitch. For free. Each and every show. An unusual, fan-friendly approach to disseminating sound and light. (I’m sensing a theme here).
Pretty Lights – Dual Fusion Unity – Full EP
First teased in the April 2023 video that announced Pretty Lights’ return, “Road to the Stars” kicks things off, an inspired cannon blast back into action. This delicate, intentional, grandiose opening salvo reveals an eight-minute expedition, effectively executed with power and panache. Atop a bed of syrupy strings, a dusty Molly Drake sample holds you in sustained suspense before dropping into an elastic bass bowl, unfurling something that immediately feels freshly baked.
Late in the tune, DVS interprets a famed stanza from “The Highwayman”, an auto-tuned affirmation that muses “Perhaps I’ll become a Pretty Light again,” coming for our emotional jugular on the very first track. Throw in glitchy blips, modular synths, dubby bass wobble, plus the mystic and the mystery, and you’ve got the sound of the return of the mack, boldly traversing the universe divide, cold as f— with newfound clarity and love on his side.
The gospel-infused “New Heights” bats second, a euphoric anthem with mixtape energy that unleashes ten tons of dopamine to the frontal lobe. Based on a hymn penned by Johnson Oatman Jr. in 1892 and set to music by Charles H. Gabriel a few years later, the version Pretty Lights mines here is full of holy spirit and a healthy slab of Stax swagger as he presses on the upward way, sharing truths from inside his ticker. Brimming with buoyant horns and heavenly harmonies, glitch/dub bass patterns, and golden-era boom-bap, this idiosyncratic track toggles between worlds and wubs, injected with a salient “Lost Souls” sample from by way of dearly-departed emcee Guru.
The celestial “Where Are You Going” is a classic Pretty Lights love song, a real dreamer flower ballad. This angelic number reveals itself with raw feelings of longing, exemplified through an exquisite vocal tremble and measured synth dub patterns oscillating through wide open spaces. The track is built around a vulnerable sample of Shirley Horn singing a Jerry Butler tune, another cut that’s rich with tangible emotion but doesn’t get too extra with it.
Without proper credits, it’s difficult to tell who might be responsible for what, and on which tunes. I think I might hear the musical voice of co-founder Michal Menert shining through the soundscapes, and possibly keyboards/arrangements reminiscent of longtime co-conspirator Borahm Lee (Break Science), both members of the current live iteration of Pretty Lights (along with turntablist Chris Karns and drummer Alvin Ford Jr.) One has to surmise had a cadre of crucial collaborators coalescing in the studio for the sessions that gave us these tracks, but without any sort of info, it’s impossible to properly spread the dap around.
“How Can You Lose? (Searching)” is absolutely stunning, a meticulously-crafted, sample-based cut-and-paste sonic collage of the highest order—a ghostly gossamer of an eight-minute meditation that’s at once vulnerable and poetic. The artist emotes through various slivers of antiquity expertly stitched together into an orgasmic odyssey. Atop warm organ and empyreal analog synths, Whitey Gallagher’s 1957 cowboy-town rumination “Searchin’ (I’m Always Lookin’) is brilliantly juxtaposed with the eerie, backwoods sound of gospel family band The Looper Trio’s 1971 nugget “Life Beyond Death”. This critical combo crafts an ancient, filial foundation for the forthcoming cryptical envelopment. Surfing minimalist bass waves, sparse acoustic drums dodge lightning bolts and lightsabers, dancing betwixt other submerged samples (an unidentifiable version of “Knockin on Heaven’s Door” does some heavy late-song lifting several thousand leagues beneath the sea). The sum of these subaqueous parts paints a magnificent mural of moody atmospherics, ethereal elements, and echoes wading in an abyssal sea.
“Sunshine Coming Through” serves as the fifth and final transmission. Anchored by gutbucket piano, this syncopated hip-hop head nod feels like a natural singalong song, embracing new beginnings and emanating positive vibrations to land the Soundship Spacesystem—at least for the time being. With sun rays a-blazin’, we arrive at the conclusion of this EP, or chapter, after roughly half an hour. It’s crystal clear from listening to this collection that Derek Vincent Smith must be in a good place now, though I suspect his best stories might remain yet untold.
While most hardcores were relatively familiar with the lion’s share of this material from post-hiatus live shows, it was still quite gratifying to sink into studio renderings, be they complete or versions-in-progress. Patient arrangements subtly-blending trademark PL electro-soul with fiery future-bass ambitions, the entirety of Dual Fusion Unity paints pretty pictures in my mind.
Though at times it sounds unfinished, and maybe even a little bit rushed, the EP represents a brief, occasionally bombastic, blissed-out-and-beautiful expression of Pretty Lights’ current-day higher ground. The five songs find a reinvigorated artist returning to his rightful throne, though still sonically searching for a place to call his own. This trip is short, but indeed a fantastic voyage on the never-ending quest for new land.
words: B.Getz