LP w/ DL - An accomplished statement of intent, Ovum Hum’s singular debut Summer Casts Shadows explores a path of its own in electronic music combining coldwave’s brooding pulse, sound system music’s visceral immediacy, and forward-thinking rhythmic structures that obscure the boundaries of hip-hop, dub, and noise. With a keen ear for sampling post-punk’s most effervescent textures and a savvy for controlled menace, Ovum Hum’s hybrid creations are rich with moody nihilism while embracing the funky bombast of his beat-scene contemporaries. Inspired by the freedom in the genre-bending output he heard from LA’s Low End Theory collective, Ovum Hum comments “Not only was it music that I felt I needed in my life, but the energy and diversity that I found in it directly influenced me to create something of my own”. Quietly crafting compositions in anonymity for the past five years, the Los Angeles producer’s twelve-track album arrives fully-formed and unique in identity, before even stepping foot on a stage. Summer Casts Shadows frenetically weaves its way through fried industrial boogie excursions, heavy half-time beats, slippery melodies, screwed synth exotica, and spectral hiss cutting through a fabric of gritty textures. Ovum Hum’s instrumental dirges develop in a non-linear fashion and almost seem to reveal a visual shape as they build in intensity. Many of the electronic elements were taken from earlier minimal wave sketches, then chopped and repurposed, fusing them with booming downtempo drums and slinky mechanical grooves. The result is a fresh take on straddling the fine production line between today’s post-Dilla beat constructions and Conny Plank’s hypnotic body music chug.