Loud Sounds 143
JONES — Moonlight
“Moonlight” revolves around a sharp, instantly memorable synth motif — a line that doesn’t just sit in the mix but defines it. Around that hook, the track builds a quiet ecosystem of background pads, faint guitar flickers and vocals delivered with quiet confidence. The singing is mixed distant and soft, in that Dev Hynes / Blood Orange way where the voice feels like another texture rather than a spotlight moment.
What makes the track hit harder is the contrast: while the top end stays weightless, the rhythm section is anything but. The bass is thick and forward, the drums hit with a kind of unbothered confidence — not flashy, just undeniably heavy. That tension between the fragile upper layers and the big, physical low end gives “Moonlight” its character: dreamy but not vague, smooth but not soft.
Instead of leaning on R&B nostalgia, the song feels more like a precise blend — minimal synth-pop sensibility matched with rhythm parts that demand actual movement. It’s direct, unfussy, and effective because every element knows its place.
“Moonlight” revolves around a sharp, instantly memorable synth motif — a line that doesn’t just sit in the mix but defines it. Around that hook, the track builds a quiet ecosystem of background pads, faint guitar flickers and vocals delivered with quiet confidence. The singing is mixed distant and soft, in that Dev Hynes / Blood Orange way where the voice feels like another texture rather than a spotlight moment.
What makes the track hit harder is the contrast: while the top end stays weightless, the rhythm section is anything but. The bass is thick and forward, the drums hit with a kind of unbothered confidence — not flashy, just undeniably heavy. That tension between the fragile upper layers and the big, physical low end gives “Moonlight” its character: dreamy but not vague, smooth but not soft.
Instead of leaning on R&B nostalgia, the song feels more like a precise blend — minimal synth-pop sensibility matched with rhythm parts that demand actual movement. It’s direct, unfussy, and effective because every element knows its place.
Enjoy more music from artists associated with Unity Group.
Mataliebre – Cirrus
The mind behind the project, Alfonso Otero — also known as AAOM — grew up in the Sinaloa desert, and Mataliebre draws directly from that environment. The project folds together regional traditions like Cumbia Norteña and Banda with a very different toolkit: ambient drift, minimal house discipline, and the fine-grained detailing of microhouse. The result isn’t some genre mashup for its own sake — it’s music that treats those regional sounds as landscape and memory, not ornament. It’s spacious, slightly arcane, and still built for movement.
“Cirrus,” the focus track from Alfonso’s EP Luz, takes that approach to its most distilled form. He describes it as “a journey through desert and beaches,” but the trip doesn’t feel postcard-pretty. It has an edge to it. The cover art — a hare staring back with a kind of uncanny alertness — sets the tone: this is nighttime territory, with the sense that something might be watching from the brush.
Across its short runtime, “Cirrus” keeps shifting shape. Textures appear and dissolve, rhythmic patterns tighten and then slither away, and small sonic details feel like sudden flashes in the dark — spirits, animals, fragments of memory. Yet through all the mutations, a single pulse carries the track forward, steady and purposeful, almost indifferent to whatever erupts around it.
Then, just as everything locks into a hypnotic zone, the track ends. No extended break, no slow fade — simply a cut at around 2:30. For a dance track this meticulously built, it’s an unusual decision, almost confrontational. But it works: it leaves the listener suspended mid-stride, as if the journey didn’t conclude so much as vanish — a horizon swallowed by night.
The mind behind the project, Alfonso Otero — also known as AAOM — grew up in the Sinaloa desert, and Mataliebre draws directly from that environment. The project folds together regional traditions like Cumbia Norteña and Banda with a very different toolkit: ambient drift, minimal house discipline, and the fine-grained detailing of microhouse. The result isn’t some genre mashup for its own sake — it’s music that treats those regional sounds as landscape and memory, not ornament. It’s spacious, slightly arcane, and still built for movement.
“Cirrus,” the focus track from Alfonso’s EP Luz, takes that approach to its most distilled form. He describes it as “a journey through desert and beaches,” but the trip doesn’t feel postcard-pretty. It has an edge to it. The cover art — a hare staring back with a kind of uncanny alertness — sets the tone: this is nighttime territory, with the sense that something might be watching from the brush.
Across its short runtime, “Cirrus” keeps shifting shape. Textures appear and dissolve, rhythmic patterns tighten and then slither away, and small sonic details feel like sudden flashes in the dark — spirits, animals, fragments of memory. Yet through all the mutations, a single pulse carries the track forward, steady and purposeful, almost indifferent to whatever erupts around it.
Then, just as everything locks into a hypnotic zone, the track ends. No extended break, no slow fade — simply a cut at around 2:30. For a dance track this meticulously built, it’s an unusual decision, almost confrontational. But it works: it leaves the listener suspended mid-stride, as if the journey didn’t conclude so much as vanish — a horizon swallowed by night.
Check out more tracks from Alfonso's project AAOM.