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: II .
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: II .
Current price: $22.99
Barnes and Noble
: II .
Current price: $22.99
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Since rejoining
in 2019,
has co-written and recorded two albums with the band (both released in 2022), while focusing on electronic music as a solo artist. He released the excellent drill'n'bass album
in 2020 and co-founded
with
; the label has quietly built up a fairly astonishing discography of forward-thinking post-rave music. When not engaged with all of those activities, he's been clearing his head by listening to a lot of drone and experimental recordings (particularly releases on the
and
labels) and making music on analog synths that develops slowly and patiently. He states that all of these pieces were recorded live on one or two machines, with no overdubs, straight to a CD burner. In 2023, he released an album of these pieces in two formats: The LP edition,
, contains one exclusive track, while the compact-disc version,
, has several pieces that contain sounds and frequencies that cannot be pressed on vinyl.
"Golpin," the first track on
, features sharply simmering oscillations that are eventually touched by sly melodies, pulsing downward, and a rain of alien disturbances and warped effects. "Pyn" suspends a moment in time, creating a glitchy micro-rhythm, but crawls in place rather than progressing further. "Blesub Dot" feels like an exercise in mind control, putting the listener in a sleeper hold before attacking with sharp, piercing frequencies and later going wild with white-noise sweeps. "Unitiled" is much less harsh and even feels a bit playful as the notes pulsate up and down with an almost cartoonish level of glissando. The second disc is even less accessible, having almost nothing to do with ambient music, and more reminiscent of outer-limits explorations of the
score -- yet even that landmark work is full of shock and suspense. "Frantay" is 16 minutes of quiet panic in a spaceship that may or may not be malfunctioning, and "Sluice" is a bewildering moment where everything has clearly gone wrong, yet somehow the chaos is oddly soothing.
It's safe to say that the average
fan won't be able to make heads or tails of this release, and even people who are into
's more IDM-influenced material will probably be confused. This is very challenging experimental electronic music closer in spirit to the genre's electro-acoustic pioneers than anything related to more commercially minded forms, such as dance music. It's not a masterpiece, but it does contain some visionary experiments, and coming from an artist who's been making music for so long, it certainly feels like it's approaching this type of abstract work from a fresh perspective. ~ Paul Simpson