1st Base Runner “Planter”

Light roar feels like a perfect description of the feeling you get listening to 1st Base Runner “Planter” from his latest 5-track EP Light Roar. The track is immersive and expansive yet it remains in a minimalistic, almost lonely, industrial aesthetic. “Planter” sees the light piano circling through a gentle, feathery melodic motif like the needles on a recorder. 1st Base Runner’s Tim Husmann layers with his melancholy vocals that speaks of an impressionistic and abstract expression. It’s blurred enough not to be specific, but it’s naked enough to feel the bones and blood.

1st Base Runner adds an explosive, upbeat percussion into the front of the song, while distancing himself and the instrumentals to exist and expands. It’s poignant and poetic form of art that feels like it’s intentionally unintentional, but the space that it creates and the way it evokes you to think is what matters.

“Planter” adheres to 1st Base Runner’s cautious and effective songwriting style with every sound tuned to perfect, doesn’t waste a drop of energy or melody. His music has a very textural storytelling to it that draws you in, intrigues and challenges you to explore, but there is no answer to the question, but the question itself. 1st Base Runner’s music feels open and inclusive enough. It sits on the edgy island of post-punk, drifting into the imaginative, mood-filled sensation of post-rock and exhales deeply in the dream pop phantom.

Circling back to light roar. 1st Base Runner did roar a little louder in “Planter.” The track closes with a protesting rolling banner-like sonic art. “Ethical Corporation: NOT FOR SALE” — it echoes and repeats, louder and louder, but in a way, it still remains in black-and-white.