Follow Plants is the third record by Limalo, the psychedelic beat music duo based in Austin, Texas composed of long-time friends Jesse Darling and Jordan Smith. After meeting at an alternative school in Fort Worth, Texas with an emphasis on nature, Limalo came into being with their first record Human Bloom in 2013, a melty reel-to-reel saturated ambient beat album which blended warped samples with warbly rhodes and droning synthesizers. Limalo plays on the surreal with samples from things like Alejandro Jodorowky’s “The Holy Mountain” and “Fantastic Planet”.
While the record employs the signature sound of Limalo’s past output with its dreamy synth lines, dirty textures and wonky beats, it marks an energetic shift in heaviness from track to track. While still sprinkled with ambient, oneiric vignettes, Follow Plants strikes harder with thundering percussive layers, booming 808’s and crackling rimshots.
Still, the album stays true to Limalo’s ambient core, capped at both ends by the intro title track Follow Plants, based around an idyllic 70’s flute & guitar cover of Erik Satie, and the final closing track Tap the Caapi, a sacred send-off of overlapping arpeggiations, performed flute and clarinet on top of a traditional Shipibo Icaro.
