Florida may be famed for the paved-over resorts of Palm Beach, the over-the-top clubs of Miami, and the swarming families of Disney World, but it’s a much calmer picture on the western side of the state. The coastline is less developed, with towns more spread out and swampy grass that feels like it’s been allowed to grow a little longer. Wildlife creeps around every corner, the water from the Gulf Coast stays bathtub-warm, and Bible Belt flora like Spanish moss trickles down from the trees, commingling with the Caribbean climate in subtly wondrous ways.
Electronic producer Hunter P. Thompson, of Akasha System, hails from this corner of the state, and he returns now for his latest release on longtime label 100% Silk. After holding it down for years in the Pacific Northwest, channeling the region’s misty atmosphere on endlessly rotatable releases like 2019’s Echo Earth and crafting mossy soundscapes under monikers such as Tegu and Opaline, he recorded his latest entirely in his new base of St. Petersburg, off the coast of Tampa Bay. Heliocene reflects his shift in surroundings: The synth arpeggios are shimmering, sun-baked, and crystalline, while the rhythms draw on local reggaeton cadences and more tactile hand percussion straight out of a Siesta Key drum circle. It’s not a radical reinvention, but everything glows a bit brighter as Thompson works out how to adapt his environmental deep house to a topography on the opposite end of the country.
Akasha System’s head-nodding approach to dance music takes after leftfield producers like Luke Slater’s 7th Plain and Larry Heard on his Sceneries Not Songs series, as he fuses his tracks with new-agey tones and rich, pulsating textures. The beat serves mainly as an excuse to dive into the folds of his gauzy synthesizers, which undulate as gently as cresting waves. On “Purity Vector,” he deploys a dembow rhythm while stacking one iridescent melody on top of another, with results that sound like what sea turtles might vibe to at the coral reef club. Thompson’s music is often unassuming—tracks like “Photonic Loop” and “Neon Paradise” start simply enough before slowly bubbling over with translucent flourishes, whether it’s the swirling flutes and choral pads that engulf the former, or the bitcrushed synths that emerge from the latter’s clacking sidestick beat.
It’s easy to get lost in Thompson’s tracks—maybe even a little too easy. Where he stands out from other (dare I say it) lo-fi house producers is in the immersive way his lush attention to detail can gradually suck you in. But sometimes it feels like he could stand to push his tracks even deeper. Songs like “Sun Particle” swell for almost seven minutes, radiating and building without ever really landing anywhere. When Thompson follows this dreamy feeling through to its potential, as in the flickering melodies of the title track, or the evolving, shadowy chords of “Soma Totem,” it’s a playful daze to wade into. He’s trying to strike a delicate balance, a middle ground that’s neither too in-your-face nor pure background listening—a classic ambient dilemma—but when Heliocene does hit its stride, Thompson proves that he can capture magic no matter the landscape.
