SoDown

Hanging around Ehren River Wright’s neck you’ll find a charm with four Latin words: Momento mori, momento vivere.

“It means, ‘Remember that you must die, remember that you must live,’” says Ehren, the composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer better known as SoDown. “That’s what this new album is all about.”

Recorded at Ehren’s own studio in Denver, Worlds Beyond marks the highly anticipated full-length debut from SoDown, who more than delivers on the promise of his early work with this bold, adventurous collection. Blurring the lines between the organic and the electronic, the music is both exhilarating and meditative all at once, equally at home on headphones as it is blasting out of a festival PA. The writing is deceptively sophisticated, drawing on stoicism and Eastern philosophy in a search for some greater meaning, and Ehren’s production is similarly ambitious, drawing on dubstep, future bass, reggae, and hip-hop with the same intoxicating mix of live instrumentation and electronic elements that’s made SoDown a live favorite on stages from Red Rocks and The Gorge to Coachella and Electric Forest. The result is a rich and cinematic sonic hybrid, one that manages to balance the visceral and the intellectual in perfect harmony as it grapples with life and death, darkness and light, struggle and transcendence.

“To be SoDown is to seize every opportunity and try new things,” says Ehren. “It’s about living the most epic life possible.”

Momento mori, momento vivere indeed.