With its inaugural release, LO VE—LowMoneyMusicLove’s freshly minted sublabel—casts its gaze beyond the horizon, setting the coordinates for an odyssey through the boundless expanse of groove. Manata, helming this voyage with his “Final Frontier” EP, charts a course that is both deeply familiar and thrillingly uncharted, balancing the weightlessness of cosmic textures with the gravitational pull of the dancefloor. The Lisbon-based producer unfurls his blueprint for movement in “Look to the Future”, a track that doesn’t so much play as it pulses, each beat a celestial body in its own orbit, each layer an echo of some distant, unseen force.
A subterranean bassline anchors the track from the outset, thick and assertive like the rumble of engines warming before liftoff. Then, like phosphorescent streaks cutting through the darkness, an acidic motif etches itself into the expanse, restless and hypnotic. The rhythm oscillates between propulsion and suspension, a game of gravity and release that Manata orchestrates with an assured hand. And then, as if peeling back the atmosphere to reveal a sun-drenched new world, the deep pads emerge—pillowy, expansive, and utterly enveloping. They carry within them the echoes of nights lost to dance, the collective memory of floors where time bends and bodies dissolve into motion.
But Manata is not one to indulge in weightlessness for too long. An organ rises from the depths, its reverberations slicing through the dreamlike ether with a preacher’s conviction. The vocal snippets—disembodied, fragmented, yet urgent—add a human touch to the machine’s steady hum, as if whispering forgotten prophecies of futures yet to be written. This interplay between the raw and the refined, the mechanical and the emotive, is where “Look to the Future” finds its charm. It does not impose a singular vision but instead opens a gateway, a shimmering mirage on the horizon, daring the listener to take that next step forward.
As the track unfolds, it becomes evident that Manata is not just constructing music—he is architecting spaces. Spaces where tension is sculpted into rhythm, where nostalgia is coded into harmony, and where the future is not merely imagined but felt. With “Look to the Future”, LO VE’s mission is clear: to tell stories through sound, to forge connections through movement, and to remind us that even in the most hypnotic loops, there is always room for discovery.
Words by Holger Breuer
Torture the Artist 