EP: Imagined Herbal Flows – Floating

Ben Gorvine has been churning out 2 to 3 original trip-hop instrumentals a month for the past year from his home studio in DC. With that kind of productivity, you’d expect only a handful of gems to surface among the rest. But his project, Imagined Herbal Flows, is something special. Each and every (and we mean every) IMF experiment has left us stunned since we came across Gorvine’s self-released MindFull LP last spring, a collection of all his published beats up to that point. Now taking the next step, IMF has signed with DDM Recordings (the new label arm of French radio Dealer de Musique) to promote his best new material since MindFull. The Floating EP contains 5 past originals and 1 previously unreleased track, Clouds. We fell in love with these songs when they had first quietly and humbly appeared floating down IMF stream. With this professional debut, Gorvine is now stirring up a storm, and we’re excited to see where it takes him.

Track by Track

Clouds – The unreleased opener that older fans immediately fall in love with, while capturing new listeners fast after the first few airy arps. Like most of IMF’s work, Clouds is ethereal, polished, and guaranteed to make your head bob. More so than others, this track really puts the LFO to work.

Breeze – We open a build with a few wooden flutes, chimes, and (I believe) a Japanese koto, dropping into a creamy side-chained pattern. There’s enough intricacy in the instrumentation to keep you discovering new details after a dozen listens. Breeze is a nice taste of something different, just out of Gorvine’s comfort zone.

Waves (feat. CYN)– CYN is a young singer/songwriter and freelance vocalist that first collaborated with IMF on Journey, a trip-hop journey (ha) that came out a few months ago. They got together again to lay down the preliminary tracks of what would later become the vocal pitch-glitch hook of Waves. The final mix is an choppy collection of many small catchy motifs, blended into a smooth downtempo undercurrent that pushes the track downstream.

Floating – Fitting for the title track, this has been my favorite slice of IMF since its release. Wide sweeping side-chained synths, warm blue electric guitar samples, delicate bells and icy plucks, and a floor-shaking hip-hop beat to keep it all centered — it captures Gorvine’s sound in a nutshell, and leaves you hooked.

Boardwalk – The oldest release on the EP, a sunset trio of electric keys, marimba, and guitar. As much as Gorvine has a gift for beatmaking, he’s also really good with capturing a song’s mood in its title.

 Autumn Leaves – Having an idea for the extent of Gorvine’s sampling talent, I half expected to hear a hip-hop spin on the old jazz standard when this first surfaced. Though it bears no relation to that classic, IMF’s Autumn Leaves is a satisfying conclusion to the album, featuring vibrato-heavy strings and a more uptempo kit.

Clocking in at just under 22 minutes, Floating is a flawless showcase of the sound that Imagined Herbal Flows has to offer. Every track is golden, and it would seem that Ben Gorvine has the Midas touch. While short but sweet, it’s some serious incentive to give the rest of his material a listen (trust me, it’s well worth the time).

Check out Imagined Herbal Flows here and DDM Recordings here.