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Nimrawd
Modern Crimes EP
(independent) - 2024
Michael Panontin
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Nimrawd seems about as obscure as one can get these days. The Montreal-based noodler, who describes himself as "an electronic musician [who writes] lo-fi instrumental music using live bass, old-school hip-hop beats and weird synths" has been issuing records digitally, including a full-length album, 2022's Love Remains, for about five years. Yet his internet presence is all but non-existent - a few hundred Instagram followers, and barely a handful on Facebook.
In an interview a few years back with Montreal's The Partae, Nimrawd told the online mag that he first took up bass guitars at the age of 16 and later cut his teeth in the indie rock world, before setting off on a solo career as a bedroom composer. He explained his approach as tapping out a beat on his iPhone and then laying down a live bassline ("I feel that live bass is key to my music. There's something about the analog nature of it that really just lets the rhythm breathe and open up") and then adding other instrumentation on top.
The four instrumentals on his Modern Crime EP seem as good a place as any to start with Nimrawd. For one thing, these tracks jettison the cacophonous feedback of his previous records for a cleaner, more spacious and, most importantly, more organic sound. The best of the bunch is probably the groovy 'Beating a Wave', which takes an old-school hip-hop beat and cloaks it with a woozy synthesizer and an early-seventies organ to interesting effect. Pretty cool stuff.
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