I first heard this tape around the same time that I was listening to Leonard Charles's Abracelebrex (reviewed back in March), and now in my mind they are permanently linked. Both artists take inspiration from hopelessly kitschy synth funk records, with Leonard Charles going the all-live/all-analog bedroom recreationist route, and LX Sweat doing more of a druggy minimalist chopped-and-screwed kind of thing. They're both archetypal one-man-bands, although LX Sweat is the kind of one-man-band that could only exist in this decade, when Ableton Live and Garageband are the go-to instruments for young punks and stoned electroboogie enthusiasts alike.
Most of the tracks on this tape consist of pitched-down and heavily altered funk and r'n'b loops that repeat for the entirety of the song, with one or two layers of added vocoder and live keyboard. The timbres are hazy, the repetition is heavy, and the mood is more oozing than ecstatic. Despite being titled "SWEAT SWEAT SWEAT," you probably won't be pumping these jams at the gym. And as with most artists doing lofi electronics, you can easily level criticism at Senor Sweat for being lazy or sloppy, but that would be totally missing the point. This isn't technical music; it's about establishing a particular mood and absorbing the listener into an unexplored world of shady alien nightclubs and late night slime. With that in mind, I give this tape my personal approval 100%.
(PS: It looks like during the time between when I got this and when I wrote this review the tape has sold out. No worries! You can grab more recent LX Sweat tracks from Not Not Fun or check out their older stuff on Soundcloud.)
—Will Griscom
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