Andrew Bayer – If It Were You, We’d Never Leave (Album Review)

Posted by on April 24, 2013

Andrew Bayer - If It Were You, We'd Never Leave

The world needs this album right now. Sometimes in this fast paced mile-a-minute world you just need to sit back, close your eyes and relax, and this is the album for that. The 25 year old American producer has developed a reputation for composing genre defying music that spans many styles and sounds. His 2011 album, “It’s Artificial” propelled his solo career forward with its wide variety of styles, from glitch-hop to silky smooth techno to eclectic electronica and progressive, creating a very cerebral experience.

Fast forward to 2013, Andrew Bayer has become a well established member of the Anjunabeats, producing with Above & Beyond on their album “Group Therapy”, being a part of Group Therapy stages everywhere from Tomorrowland to EDC Las Vegas and Electric Zoo, and joining Above & Beyond on tour all over the world. He has established himself with a growing single discography that includes the recently released “England” on Anjunabeats. “If It Were You, We’d Never Leave” is the progression of Andrew Bayer as an artist from his more days with the Signalrunners, making traditional trance music, to a now more ambient, orchestral, album oriented sound that has a timeless quality seen in very few full length electronic pieces today.

Beatport | iTunes | Physical CD

I have had the pleasure of being able to live with this album over the past few weeks and in between the upbeat house tracks being churned out daily, sit back and get taken away on the journey conducted by Andrew Bayer. You can really feel the emotion in the album, as he said to us earlier in the month, “It is the storyboard of my childhood and all of the sounds that I grew up with”, and you can just feel those memories and emotions being played out in the little fluttering wind chime in “Counting Down” or the heart-tugging strings used in “Brief Interlude”.

The sampling in the album is one of the things that makes it such a unique and brings out so many of Andrew Bayer’s influences and favorite artists. The album has 7 or 8 sample based records on it, much like one of his favorite artists J Dilla, sampling artists like Sufjan Stevens, Ane Brun and Deb Talan. It is difficult to pick out favorites, because this is one total body of work that makes it tough to single out individual songs as atmospheric pads, emotive strings, moving piano and the occasional vocal sample, create one single musical voyage for the listener that can be revisited time and time again.

This is one of the most complete albums from start to finish I have heard in a long time, there is no empty moment, no second wasted as Andrew Bayer shoots for an album that will sound fresh one year from now, 10 years from now or 100 years from now.

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