Lucky by Lusine

The quietly pretty sounds of "Lucky" are a highlight of The Waiting Room, Seattle-based producer Jeff McIlwain's third full-length album for Ghostly International. The track's warm, immersive sounds are a fine representation of the abiding mood of the album as a whole, both soulful and groove-laden, sitting somewhere between electronic pop and experimentalism. For this single release, "Lucky" comes with three remixes, all of which take different approaches to exploring the track's reflective, downtempo mood.

Jeremy Greenspan's reinterpretation of the track extracts a brief pitched-down vocal sample and sets it over an insistent drum pattern and a woozy synth sample, and Steve Hauschildt's remix explores similar territory, dialing the beat back and wreathing the vocal sample in layers of slowly unfolding synth textures that pan around the stereo spectrum, leaving you with a sense that you're somehow floating in the middle of the track. Lake People, meanwhile, jettison the vocals altogether, crafting an instrumental that's aimed straight at the dancefloor — specifically, a laid-back dancefloor on a beach somewhere. As a whole, the single plays out at as a series of meditations on a single theme — that of electronic music that's got a heart and a soul.

From his early releases as Lusine onward, Jeff McIlwain’s electronic explorations make up one of the
more diverse discographies of the past two decades.