Written by What is so captivating about a pitch-shifted vocal sample? Is it just good old existing IP, scratching the same itch for the trillionth time? Is it the thrill of hearing a sound you thought was fixed respawn somewhere totally new? Loukeman’s eggs are in the latter basket. The Toronto-based producer’s wistful, anemoic dance tracks trawl for vocals across pop, folk, R&B, and hip-hop of the past decade, a net that dredges up Bryson Tiller and Lomelda with equal gusto. But it’s his rendering, like sonic sfumato, that’s the crux of his music. Using an Analog Rytm saturator and a few choice plug-ins, Luke Fenton approaches sung snippets like wet clay, endlessly moldable with a little osmosis. As he put it in an interview last year, he aims to “glue everything together and fuck everything up.”
His new album, Sd-3, gets it nice and stuck. Misty-eyed in all the right places, it closes the loop on a trilogy that started with a beat tape churned out in his college bedroom and concludes with credits on A$AP Rocky, PinkPantheress, and MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt songs. Lusher than 2021’s Sd-1 and more wandering than 2024’s Sd-2, Sd-3 plays like an unlabeled CD-R salvaged from a garage sale, personalized by the preferences of its maker and the patina of time. Fenton lays out Sd-3 with a similar ethos as Chuquimamani-Condori’s NTS shows, where the omnivorous palette of bro country, huaynos, and splintered EDM skillfully evoke genre intersections intimate enough to feel internally consistent.
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He may prefer his vocal tracks yassified to maintain anonymity (trust, you’ve never heard Mario like on “Baby You’re a Star”), but on Sd-3, Fenton keeps his influences pinned to his chest like badges. “Manifester” is pure Evian Christ theatrics, dungeon synths and all; the burbling guitars on “John Bird Song” give Two Star & the Dream Police a run for its money; the folksy arrangements on “All Kindz” and “U Love It” could’ve been plucked from a pile of mid-’10s Bon Iver demos. “All I Could Think Of” fits out the breathy refrain of Canadian songwriter Georgia Harmer’s “Headrush” with boom-bap drums and boomerang reverb à la Clams Casino, whose heady fingerprints also linger on the wistful, Lizzy McAlpine-sampling “The Kid.”
Fenton’s heuristic approach to sampling produces such distinct outcomes that he’s happy to repeat outfits without fear of redundancy. “To the Sky,” a collaboration with Patrick Holland of Montreal-based duo Jump Source, also transforms Harmer’s “Headrush” to novel effect, trading proto-cloud rap for sunny, sumptuous house that showcases versatility and consistency. The pattering “Numberzz” incorporates Lomelda’s “Hannah Sun,” which Fenton previously chiptuned into the winning 2021 track “Shadowww.” You get the sense he appreciates how old haunts change over time.
If Sd-3 has a core motif, it’s that Fenton is, in the resonant words of fellow countrywoman Tate McRae, “Canada down.” Track titles originate from inside jokes with hometown friends, and Patrick Holland and Toronto pop stoic Brat Star appear in a “To the Sky” music video set at a Molson Canadian-fueled pick-up hockey game. He walks the walk in the mix, too. “Pink Bape Lighter” links 8-bit video game victory music with a sparkly ’80s synth that the Weeknd has surely attempted to copyright; “To the Sky” would fit right into an extended Daphni set. Plenty of artists rep their city, but Fenton’s strain of hometown glory is pleasantly open-door: The Toronto in his mind’s eye has room for global superstars, friends with a Bandcamp, and anyone in between.
Fenton’s big tent sometimes makes for thin material, though. “The Kid” is the only track to pass as a fleshed-out pop song, with the rest relying on slight textural and tonal changes to stand out; he sometimes reverts to rehash mode, as if he’s working on his lodestars’ music, not making their sound work for him. “Baby Why” all-too-earnestly grasps at Two Shell’s heyday; “All Kindz” though pretty, reminds me why Passenger is not popular anymore. Even though “Mad” eschews standard lullaby format by upping the tempo and sprinkling in some beatboxing, it also teeters on treacle-folk territory, less offensive for being guileless than evoking 2013. These little plateaus further define Sd-3’s peaks. “Real Stressor,” one of the best of the bunch, builds out a minor-key topline that recalls Carti’s “Different Day” with lo-fi breaks and reverberating fingerstyle. The three elements sound incongruous on paper; Fenton’s ingenuity makes them leap off the page.
Sd-3’s preoccupation with place over genre gives these songs a diegetic feel, like stepping into a Sims neighborhood someone else took years to build. So light is is Fenton’s touch that Sd-3 can successfully convince that you, too, have a Lenny Kravitz or Adrienne Lenker track imprinted on the back of your mind from late-night commutes home from the swing shift at Tim Hortons; that you, too, are growing with this music. The muddled voices that populate Fenton’s delicate, everything-is-not-what-it-seems habitats encourage interpretation; the scene is set, but you choose your own adventure. Might as well lace up your skates.
