By John Diliberto 2/1/2025
Over the past two years I have found a strain of electronics that is ebullient, joyful and uplifting. It’s a contrast to the moody, melancholy, space abstractions that I usually enjoy in electronic music. I’ve heard this sound in Counter Melody by Maps, the Saul Stokes alias Taiyo Rey on the albums Shattering Stimuli and Visitor, and Sunstrom Sound’s Solar Cycle. These aren’t artists going for Vangelis grandiosity, Steve Roach heaviness or Bluetech’s psychedelic pinballs in space. The music is effervescent, melodic and all major key. That’s the sound of Late Day Summer Breeze by Dieter Spears.
I’ll be honest. If all of Dieter Spears’s Late Day Summer Breeze sounded like the opening title track, it would’ve been tossed into the digital debris pile. It opens with a fake commercial announcer talking over vinyl scratches asking you to “take a moment and enjoy the late day summer breeze.” That launches a cheesy, electronic dance track that I could only hope is a parody of disco era funk happiness.
But then he segues into “Life with You,” a propulsive track that still has a bit of that disco-era beat transfused through Kraftwerk poptronics and simple “Popcorn” melodies, but layered on a more trancey groove and ascending chords. Almost every track follows suit. “Drive the Night” recalls Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice score with the four-on-the floor rhythms, metal guitar accents and even the bouncing boobs drums reminiscent of Hammer’s Roland DDR-30 electronic drums. (If you’ve seen the Miami Vice opening title sequence, you know what I’m referring to.)
“Dreamwalks” offers a brief respite from the groove with bell-like synth tones bordering on a minimalist Christmas theme. Across seven minutes the melodic cycles are joined by surging synth chords and cinematic harmonies that keep cycling in a canonic form that’s a bit like Pachelbel on steroids.
But then it’s back into the funk with “The Voyage of Seantu.” Spears is an eclectic artist in the Nashville scene. He plays bass as his main instrument, playing in the bands “Picture This!” and “Subject to Change” on the local club scene. But Late Day Summer Breeze is all in the box and while analog sounds are currently all the rage, Spears exults in 1980s digital timbres that are bright, cutting and chromium-plated. It works effectively on tracks like “Watchers in the Ether” when it’s matched up with what sounds like live bass playing, and a more panoramic expanse.
The album ends on a more contemplative mood with “The Time Before Dawn,” a pensive, melancholy track that sustains itself through seven minutes with occasional shifts in rhythm, but always with a floating-on-the-ocean feel, even with some 8-bit melodies that again harken back to Gershon Kingsley’s “Popcorn.”
As the title and the Jetsons-in-palm-trees house on the cover suggest, Late Day Summer Breeze is not a heavy album. It’s a respite from the weight of the day. It is Effervescent Electronica.