Shrimpnose is a producer from Minneapolis who has been making music for a minute now. Most notably, he produced the brutal “I just moved to Minnesota (so you’re all FUCKED),” by CRASHprez. Recently, a good friend of his passed away. In tribute to his friend’s life, Shrimpnose now gives us the beautiful EP, Dawn.

Shrimpnose’s style is to work in sort of an ambient electronic vein, which works well when constructing music that’s meant to help cope with loss. There are a lot of lo-fi effects and methodical beats, drawing from shoegaze and instrumental hip hop. This isn’t an EP with singles, or meant to blast out of your car stereo. It’s meant for a period of reflection and contemplation, and for that purpose Dawn works very well. Shrimpnose has a very gentle touch to his production here, with a lot of warm sounds and downtempo beats, the kind of soundtrack that sounds good on headphones as you get lost inside your own head as you try to figure things out. It’s technically a short release, with five tracks just cracking the eleven-minute mark, but Shrimpnose actually finds a way to create such a meditative atmosphere with his music that it feel much longer and more substantial than that.

Dawn is a fairly simple EP in concept, but the execution is what makes it special. Coping with loss of any kind is hard, but having a good friend pass away is especially difficult. Putting this music out makes for a nice tribute, and I’m sure will help others with their coping as well.