A core member of the Pacific NorthWest’s Dropping Gems collective/label, Seattle beatmaker Alex Osuch (a.k.a. DJAO) is set to drop his self-titled debut LP via the outpost next week. After having shared a stream of piano-rich—and intriguingly titled—LP cut “Depressing Jog Ends Well” with the original announcement of his LP back in September, the cavernous “Foreign Heart” serves as our second taste of DJAO’s upcoming full-length. An efficient production, “Foreign Heart” places sparse but precise rhythms beneath a bed of reversed chords and a mountain of wordless vocals, whose slow-morphing lines build and intersect at certain points, removing the focus from their individual notes and instead leaving the listener immersed in the mass of reverb-laden murmurs they create when combined together. “Foreign Heart” and 11 other DJAO productions are set to see their official release when DJAO drops in digital and cassette form on October 28.

Foreign Heart