Since his breakout in 2020, New York producer Baltra has become one of the defining names in the current lo-fi and dream-house wave, and Dreaming of a Disco—his new four-track EP on Shall Not Fade—is his strongest statement yet. It arrives as the label’s 61st release, and it’s easy to hear why they’ve kept him close: this is a record built from long-form cuts and tape-worn textures, the kind of music that feels like it’s being played back from a cassette found in a bedroom.
Title track Dreaming of a Disco sets the tone over six unhurried minutes. A muffled four-to-the-floor kicks beneath a thick blanket of hiss, whilst detuned chords drift in and out of focus like half-remembered melodies. The bassline wobbles and sags in all the right places, and rather than building to a drop, the track simply allows more sunlight in, pad by pad, until the whole thing shimmers. It’s less a peak-time record than a mid-summer evening spent watching the light change.
Imaginary Laughter pushes the dream logic further, its distant, indistinct vocal fragments treated as instrumentation rather than song. Reverb swallows the edges of every hit and the groove rolls with a pleasing, slightly woozy momentum. Private Paradise, the EP’s eight-minute centrepiece, is the most immersive thing here: a slow-burning drift of dusty drums and aching chords that rewards patience, its final third letting a warm bassline rise through the static like something surfacing from sleep.
Closer Sunset Jam is the most direct track of the four, and all the better for it. At four and a half minutes it’s positively economical by Baltra’s standards, its compressed drums and glossy chord stabs delivering the EP’s most immediate hook before the tape runs out. If the rest of the record is a reverie, this is the moment the waking world rushes back in.
With Dreaming of a Disco, Baltra confirms that his knack for making lo-fi feel lush rather than lazy is no accident. It’s a record that wears its tape fizz with pride, and it deserves to be heard exactly as it was made: warm, woozy and played loud.
