Andrew Bayer — In My Last Life (Review)
Trying to talk about Andrew Bayer productions for me is like if I asked myself to grab another slice of pizza and then to do that I start organizing ingredients to make a stir fry. I want to eat the pizza and do my usual thing and discuss the creator for a little bit before divulging their latest creation in the context of their wider works and the environment in which they’re releasing it with some analysis on its strengths and weaknesses. Instead I try to create an entirely different conversation out of the many things you can discuss about the realm of electronic music and its facets if Andrew Bayer were to be the vehicle for it. I quit before I ever finish organizing the ingredients, deciding the process to be too difficult requiring too many pieces, and I never have enough time.
And I’ve never wanted to go about this in a cruel way either. I genuinely have always thought Andrew Bayer is a really versatile creator with a lot of talent. I just also have my own concerns that Andrew Bayer holds himself back or works himself too busy by being, more or less, the Brian Eno of Above & Beyond, working as their creative go-between guy while any of the trio members are out of the office by helping them wrangle and bypass the numerous steps in production that electronic producers may consider boring or tedious. His anthem-oriented focus has widely contributed and helped influence a part of the Anjunabeats modern progressive-trance feeling that more or less is all about drops and jumps and not leaving much room for stronger lyrical verse or emotional development except in the track’s bridge. I’ve found these developments and changes ultimately frustrating over the years, especially seeing Andrew Bayer only gets enough time to release just one conceptual EP and mainly club-ready singles across the past five years. Don’t get me wrong, he makes good music. His Anamnesis EP (Nobody Told Me in particular) is really good, and so is his Do Androids Dream EP, but these are his only major longer creative works he has published with his name at the helm since his last album five years ago. Before then, Andrew Bayer’s self-promoting release schedule was a lot more frequent, and he had even released his debut album just two years prior in 2011.
But I’m beginning to consider the degree to which I may be mistaken. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Above & Beyond and Andrew Bayer might greatly benefit by putting some distance between how much he helps Above & Beyond make music that has their name on it and not his. I really think it would benefit them both from a creative perspective as it’s still too easy to hear Andrew Bayer’s production quirks and methods all over the past two Above & Beyond albums and their club releases. And yet, Andrew Bayer seems to have made an album that makes me question all of my doubts, frustrations, and concerns about him being held back or unhappy with his current numerous occupations he must hold at Anjunabeats. Because In My Last Life, like any Andrew Bayer album, is really good. And it’s absolutely an interesting stepping stone in his development as a creator as he’s made an album chock full of both interesting electronic elements, themes at play and filled each of the tracks with songs from his two go-to songwriters and vocalists: Ane Brun and Allison May. But the album also feels like a celebration of his current life while exploring what he might be leaving behind for the most part.
And that’s where I have to stop and let you know: I’m going to eat this slice of pizza, but I do want to preface talking about this slice of pizza with the acknowledgement that I understand this review…is entirely opinion based and a massive subjective lens we’re about to use here. I know this because Andrew Bayer has already gone public in two very specific internet conversations about his new album, its themes, and the stories behind particular tracks, how they came about, and how the album is designed to uphold his own exploration of the album’s subject matter. You’ll see these conversations in an image of a Facebook post by Andrew Bayer below this paragraph and you’ll find his interview with Tony McGuiness from the Above & Beyond YouTube channel further here. I realize what I’m about to discuss clearly isn’t accurate to Bayer’s life or what he’s presenting on this album, but I bring this all up because my exploration of Bayer’s album and the meanings one can gather from its core themes is relevant to my problem trying to make a stir fry whenever I sit down to eat a slice of pizza. And I think the fact that this album addresses my ingredient problem makes this review…interesting, to say the least.
Here in 2018, Bayer, for maybe the first time, lays all of his emotions bare by giving us an album with full songs, lyrics, and makes the subject matter (with the album art too) clearly something shaping and resembling the humanity inside him and maybe ourselves as well. But beyond that shape is hard to discern and the emotional core coming out of it is something simultaneously divided and yet assured. The opening piece, the second longest track to go on the album with a bookend style, can be looked at as pontificating on the massive and unexpected success in music (“Though I dream of oceans I never wanted all of it”) and actually drowning in it, unable to control how chaotic and out of control their career has become. This chaotic tidal wave drowns the artist and separates them in a constant work-a-holic cycle of producing tracks for tour, touring, and in the case of Andrew Bayer, helping Above & Beyond produce as well, keeping the creator away from getting back to the thing they want to do most: express and create (“Will I drown, knowing what I could have done?”) The sonic soundscape here is met with lush and loud pads crashing over the chorus singing “wave” while the main verse is spent in the echo-chamber that is being underwater, having an almost muted mid-scape of sounds while bass remains present and consistent.
Second track “Love You More” meanwhile feels like the alter ego of the album (the rapturous experience of finding love and getting married) is getting its introduction here. A slow and steady 1–2 beat takes up the majority of the track with careful twists and background synth work to fill up the room with a unique organic hum while Ane Brun reminds us (or Andrew) to make the most out of love and that it’s something to be preciously valued.
Third track Open End Resource really takes the cake on exploring new audio territory for Andrew Bayer and in my opinion breaks right through into the album’s deeper and really good territory. A series of steady breaks set the pace while all around that space we hear a couple different mellow guitar pieces played alternatively while Alison May introduces themes of being hopelessly stuck to the identity crafted by our successes and the inability to break out of it or escape it. This success is also what links us to those vicious cycles and work-a-holic behaviors in attempts to grapple with it and even control it. The second verse affirms the safety net this identity crises brings about, and suggests a resolution met with the reality that it’ll work out in the end thanks to the open end resource of admiration and support from fans, despite the fact that the fans won’t ever truly understand this artist. It’s here that I’m unmistakably getting way out of line from what Bayer is actually exploring on this album vs. what I’m exploring. But this really is how this album came off to me at first. It should be noted that Open End Resource comes with just enough extra production techniques like stings, wind ups and wind-downs and really excellent vocal effects taking place between stanzas in the song. Internally this is one of my favorite tracks on the album and I’d love to see Andrew Bayer very lightly re- work the clicks setting the pace of the song to a light percussion overlayed with this song’s vocals. Unfortunately, the production elements at play make me fear he’ll just turn this into yet another modern trance major stage moment instead of the excellently under-handed experience this track could provide if carefully adjusted the way it is. (future note upon finalizing this review: This is exactly what wound up happening) I really think it has that much pliability for a remix EP, even if Andrew Bayer did all the remixes himself. It could possibly even double as a chilly drum & bass number.
Next Andrew Bayer gets really industrial and noisy with “Hold On to You” with Ane Brun, which is effective at the feeling it’s attempting to create. The song is about the experience of losing someone and the chaotic, rugged beats at play here with noise drowning out the mid layer makes for a really somber thing that can’t be escaped, especially with the long and carefully intermittent pads fading in and out of the song. Having dealt with tremendous loss recently in my life, I can attest to the feeling of this track being accurate to the sort of chaotic, and difficult to wrestle emotions that come with losing someone too early in life to readily grasp the notion. But I simultaneously think by this design the track isn’t one easily “enjoyed”, and it earns high marks for at least exploring that in a way that I think is pretty accurate to the real experience.
Hold On To You’s distinct audio collisions almost serve as the mid-section of the audio journey and title track “In My Last Life” became the moment the album started to hold more form with my perspective. Not only does the track feature some more light indie guitar strums to mirror the design of the other half of the album with track Open End Resource, but it’s also the moment the album draws straight lines to Bayer’s previous works in ways I wasn’t expecting. “In My Last Life” starts first on the very thing that would associate any producer’s breakout success in electronic music: A 4/4 beat pattern. Here the beat is one that is definitely slightly different from his usual tightly-wound club productions. The bass is still heavy though and since the album up to this point has been all eclectic, and the name of the track is “In My Last Life”, my mind goes straight to his days prior to the big success of tracks like Perth, England, or his club mix of Need Your Love, it goes back to his progressive house days with Boom Jinx or the more roomy pieces like A Drink for Calamity Jane. Meanwhile Alison May’s voice speaks regret and missed opportunities into days alone in literally “my last life”, which can be viewed as a phase of life in one’s career, considering it dead or no longer an active experience worth exploring.
The song ends considering the possibilities of “in my next life” being something done right and getting or spending more time with someone missed in the previous life. Again, my observations per what Andrew Bayer says about this album are wrong, but then Andrew Bayer through this track made me feel like he was more or less saying goodbye to his days of constantly doing what he has been for years. And then to make sure I didn’t miss the point, he pulled up one of his signature sound elements that I thought he had almost entirely abandoned on this album: The plucky, almost xylophone-esque piano bits that are littered all over his works across the years. It was absent from the first four tracks of this album. “In My Last Life” the album and quite a few of the songs that occupy its space more or less spoke out to me that Bayer has already gone through this process of leaving behind attempting to clash club music and artistry and is ready to fully embrace the road he’s currently on now: Making his own albums, putting out a club track maybe once a year, and working with Above & Beyond a lot. And then I got the vibe that he couldn’t be happier doing that with the next two tracks.
Leading single Immortal Lover is already unique and elegant, taking advantage of roomy piano reverb amidst slow and scattered beat patterns with very rich textures. Alison May sings gloriously that into the ways immortal love can hold us onto one side of life or the other, desperately reaching out for the one opposite us. It’s a brooding, ambient piece that is simultaneously dark and yet filled with warmth and love that can’t be erased. Meanwhile Ane Brun and fun indie-synth rock take up the room next with “Your Eyes”, a song about the excitement of a relationship beginning and all of the emotions that run through it. It’s a blast, and despite this album feeling like some sort of a deep exploration of some major themes, I do think exploration on life, death, and love means having some fun because life is fun too.
Last track End of All Things spends a little bit more time in that Andrew Bayer club-single heydey by containing the biggest bridge synth stuff that you can find in many of his singles, no beats, just lots of synths, pads, and big emotive bookending feelings. He’s taken similar roads like this on tracks like “Closing Act” before, this time though it’s supported with Alison May and is exploring moreso the nature of end itself and what it means, which ultimately lends the close of his album on a feeling of peace in a way that he’s never really been able to do before. It’s on this track he brings back his reliable old signatures, but embraces them in ways that ignore the previous uses of them and says “Hello” to the road in front of him in a way that feels truly final and if ever there was a moment I realized Bayer’s not undergoing some massive struggles about his career and which direction to run in, it was then.
“In My Last Life” probably isn’t going to be some massively heralded genius album, and Andrew Bayer probably isn’t going to stop working with Above & Beyond the way he has been anytime soon. But I do think his album that pontificates heavily on life and death, beginnings and endings, and the joy he’s felt in making an album entirely with songwriting definitely carries with it more weight than what he has been willing to share about its inspirations, which is to say: I think Bayer’s evolving like any artist would in his spot. And I’d rather see him release albums like this all year round if it meant he breaks up his own club music formula too with new approaches and genres out on the stage. It’s in the shake-up and the unique non-traditional approach that has always dominated my mind when it comes to Andrew Bayer’s works. His works like Keep Your Secrets, all three of his albums, his remix of Secret by OceanLab, the odd instrumental elements of England, his melodies on The Taxi Driver, and his atmospheres on Disctractions, these are the things that have made him interesting to me over the years and I can say with confidence I was really presuming to know more than I possibly could about his creative endeavors over the years, including this one. But it’s completely honest that In My Last Life made me rethink all of that and prepare to let those thoughts go. And I think that says something, it’s definitely worth a listen or three in my book.
