By Marcy Nabors and Corbin Pangilinan

Shortcuts builds a lot of its sound off of the real world – all of the tracks feature samples and background sounds taken from various locales. The source for this song was simple enough: a busy crosswalk with a robotic countdown. Yet from that meager seed comes a really solid little piece of music.

The world slowly fades away into the jam (except for our friendly guide, the disembodied robo-crossing guard). If done poorly, this could easily be called gimmicky. But it’s not done poorly. It’s immersive and clever, and a great, relaxing track to boot. My top track on the album.

The album Shortcuts, by Casual Sunday, is available for purchase at Bandcamp.