Soother is an alias of Mumbai-based electronic music producer Abhijit Sood. He’s been active in the scene for a long time as a drummer, playing for bands like the Revisit Project, Faridkot and Parikrama. His new EP ‘Colors’ follows two EPs he released last year; Soother is, in his own words, an attempt to expand his boundaries as a musician and beyond being just a drummer. ‘Colors’ is a pretty compelling listen and has a nice assortment of sounds and musical touches that make for a relaxing six-odd minutes of music.

There’s been a funny trend in the indie space of late where artists are releasing 2-song EPs that fall well under ten minutes of listening time. Sometimes it represents a lack of effort; it’s fairly obvious in those cases that two random tracks have been shoehorned into one release and called an EP just for marketing purposes. Other times it works as a little taste of what the artist has to offer. Even though ‘Colors’ is two tracks long and has just about six and a half minutes of music, it is a tight and quick listen though it wouldn’t have hurt to have another track or two on it. But what is there has quite a bit to offer. Soother goes for a sound that everyone has heard and enjoyed at some point in their lives a mixture of downtempo and glitch with a little bit of chopped and screwed thrown in at points.

Yes, Soother is clearly making electronic music here, but there is a quiet emphasis on rhythm that doesn’t come as a surprise since he is such an accomplished drummer. The beats on the first track, ‘Glitch Love’, has nuance and groove in spades. It’s a stuttering groove that has a whole bunch of chopped up vocal samples to give it added rhythm. The vocals don’t do any melodic work over both the tracks here, but they provide sub-rhythms and flourishes that almost do the job that a drum fill or a ghost note does in ‘live’ music. There was a time when electronic music went away from the furiously fast tempos of the late 80s and started slowing things down to incorporate these quick little snatches of vocals (RIP DJ Screw) and this sentiment is exploited to great effect on ‘Colors’. Melodic lines are provides by some buttery smooth synths and effected pianos that provide a nice, calming foil to all the drum and vocal stuff going on. ‘Green’ has an equally semi-nostalgic feel, featuring an understated buildup (remember those?) and some swirling, bombastic synth sounds. The chopped up vocals here are used as a backup synth sound in a few instances as well, and all that texture is a nice way to end the listening experience.

As short as it is, ‘Colors’ is a solid release and shows the willingness Soother has to experiment a little and layer some sounds that are as diverse as they are familiar to many groups of people. It could definitely have had more material on it, but ‘Colors’ will do fine for now.