Artist: Lowdoses
Title: 'Smelter Town'
Label: New Earth Sound

Every title on this record points at the same square mile of west Texas. Lowdoses has called it 'Smelter Town', and the sleeve is a photograph of two industrial chimneys against a mountain at dusk. He files it himself as liquid drum and bass, ambient electronics and soundsystem weight, and he works out of El Paso.

Here is what those names belong to, because he does not spell it out. Smeltertown was a community west of downtown El Paso, built around the ASARCO smelter and lived in by the people who worked there. Lead contamination ended it. Residents were moved out and their homes demolished in the early 1970s, and the stacks on that sleeve were dynamited in 2013. A neighbourhood called La Calavera survived.

Those are the three track titles. Lowdoses has not said why, and we are not going to put words in his mouth, but the record is named after a place that was taken apart and the two things that are left of it. According to the press release, the album reflects the characteristics of the El Paso borderlands.

He keeps his own catalogue on Bandcamp and this one is self released, though his name also sits on the roster at New Earth Sound, a Los Angeles label whose catalogue opens in February 2024. Woodseye, Frythm, Take My Lungs and djD3o are on it too. We made Dise's 'Arcadia' for that label our Single of the Week not long ago.

Out now. Get your hands on it at Bandcamp.