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Paco Sala first came to fruition sometime in 2011 as Konntinent's Antony Harrison began exploring a totally different side to his musical personality. In many ways, Paco Sala is the complete antithesis of what Konntinent is. What is most impressive, though, is that while each project has its own, distinct voice, both are showcases for Harrison's incredible talent.
Following up the debut cassette, Radial Sundown, that introduced Paco Sala as a new solo vehicle for Harrison's love of hip-hop, Italo-disco, & synth-infused pop music, Harrison joined forces with vocalist Leyli. And that is when everything changed. Leyli's voice became the perfect muse for Harrison's squashed productions, adding an elegance and airiness to the dark, heavy-handed crunch. This is most evident on the show-stopper, "Spiral." Leyli's voice is divine, streaming skyward as it twists into endless, delicate shapes. The plodding, hypnotic beat and tropicalia-infused loops are the perfect backdrop. This is the sound of being lost in a future dystopian Caribbean nightlife. It's stunning.
Elsewhere, such as album opener "Dumb Truths," Harrison whispers sweet, unintelligible nothings on a star bed of blown-out beats and melodic sci-fi synths. Crystalline drops are compressed into fluorescent neon highways on the bass-heavy "Legacy Edition" while the title track is a muddy excursion to an underground club where everything is about to fall apart.
Leyli slowly takes over the album's first single, "Gifts of the Bloom," with layer-upon-layer of wordless murmurs. Along with B-Side opener, "Tre's Future First," these two pieces show off Paco Sala's Italo influence with stunted dance beats and catchy, yet minimal, synths. It's the vocals, though, that continually push Ro-me-ro to another level and this is perhaps most obvious on the magical "Earn Your Stripe." This is as musically understated as any piece on Ro-me-ro with Harrison showing incredible restraint in his production. Leyli, however, knocks it out of the park, wrapping the song with an intimate warmth. As she purrs, "We were in the wrong place at the wrong time," nothing could be further from the truth. This is what it feels like to be home.
Original art by Marie-Pascale Hardy. Mastered by Brad Rose and cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at D+M Berlin.
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Norm Chambers is not a household name to most people but for those who have been reveling in the monster that is Panabrite for the last few years, he is absolutely adored. Some will be quick to chalk Soft Terminal up as another 'synth record,' but that's just the surface dressing. There is something deeper and much more complex happening here. Vivid, liquid dreams are sculpted into intricate fantasy landscapes, each layer revealing what a wizard Chambers is.
The thing with Panabrite is that he has an innate ability to write richly textured, melodic compositions that have as much in common with vintage electronic library music as they do with minimal synth pop and 70s prog. Soft Terminal proves that he is no one-trick pony straight away with the opening duo of "Rainbow Sequence" and "Index of Gestures." The former remains understated, moving simply and slowly while pulling open the curtain on the rest of the album. With "Index of Gestures," Chambers opens up the sequencers and lets them fly. Dizzying passages resonate on the horizon, each taking aim at flight. When the piece finally feels like it will lift off, he tightens the reins and dives straight into an underwater synthesizer ballet. It's dripping with sentimentality and is all the better for it.
But that's only a small part of the story. "Janus" opens with finger-picked guitar arrangements augmented with synth chords and rising leads. The guitars return on "Sound Softly" while Chambers' ghostly, robotic vocals float away unscathed. On "Beta Axis Terminal," pointillist tones flutter in and out before sharp, sequenced chord progressions overtake them. As the piece continues to build, vocoder hovers above thickened basslines and you feel lost in a dystopian sci-fi novel.
While there are elements throughout the entirety of Soft Terminal, Chambers' pop sensibilites are most evident on the mini-masterpiece, "Camembert Symphony." Pushed along by the constant thrum of a drum machine, multiple melodies are interwoven, wrapping themselves tightly around you. Each soaring synth lead gets the song further stuck in your head before fading away into the sonic ether. It's a perfect exclamation mark on a stunning album. Panabrite is a force to be reckoned with.
Mastered by Brad Rose and cut at D+M, pressed in Germany.
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When I really think about it, it utterly blows my mind that FRAK has been around for 25 years now. They have been the talisman of Sweden's inimitable Börft label since its inception. Over the course of dozens of tapes, 12”s, and full-lengths this group has known no real boundaries. It is alien music in every sense of the word. Even if each track offers something different to the narrative, the album keeps a connective tissue running throughout. After 25 years, FRAK is showing no signs of age.
Muzika Electronic is a mix of skewed dance music paired with heavy doses of modular synthesizer exploration and bizarro pop. It's all brand new, recorded specifically for Digitalis. FRAK is constantly skirting the line between minimal dance music and noise music, often finding new and innovative spaces to occupy and exploit. Album opener “Voyage No. 1” embodies this to perfection. Slow-moving rhythms provide the backbone while looping, crusty synths spin around, spiked with dizzying, high-pitched melodies. It seems odd at first, but as an introduction to what is contained within the sonic walls of Muzika Electronic, it starts this journey off right. It flows into the deceptively catchy “Tristesse Dance” like magic. You will find yourself hooked on the cyclical bassline within a few bars.
FRAK's pop sensibilities are most on display, though, with the New Order-tinged “Pulse-Crack.” Wide-eyed leads mesh into the pulsating bass undercurrents, riding a blissed-out electronic wave into outer space. It is absolutely hypnotizing. The robotic vocals of “Varje Dag” and “In Order to Create” are swimming in a sci-fi glow. This is music that is wrestling with itself, never sure if it is searching for the future of dance music or harkening back to its past. That dichotomy, though, is what drives Muzika Electronic into so many great and unexpected realms. Ultimately, this is a place we all should want to be.
Cut to vinyl (LOUD) by Rashad Becker at D+M Berlin. Art by Tiny Little Hammers.
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It's almost winter as I write this and I am pretty sure everything is about to fall apart. Perispirit is the duo of Ricardo Donoso and Luke Moldof and they have been haunting the Northeast for a couple of years now. After a slew of releases on Hospital & Ricardo's own Semata Productions, Spiritual Church Movement has Perispirit taking an unexpected turn as they unleash their most cohesive and accomplished work to date.
Spiritual Church Movement is the sound of two worlds colliding and forming something entirely new in the aftermath. In this case, digital and analog systems are turned against each other. Moldof's analog source material was blitzed and manipulated while Donoso worked his sorcery via digital matrix, showing that both approaches can win the prize. Squalid sonic debris spilled out and melted together with beats that are barely there and melodic shrapnel to create this weirdly compelling, utterly disjointed composition. This is dense music with layer-upon-layer of treatments and tones that could only be combined by two people who are as confident as they are diabolical.
If you thought Moldof and Donoso were concerned about expectations, Spiritual Church Movement is proof that that is the last thing on their minds. Synthesizers are mauled by digital processes, battered down to bare bones. The duo turns these passages of melody into disease-stricken robots, lurching into the black of night. Paired with fractured, plodding rhythms, at times this sounds like Autechre attempting to make a noise record. It is well and truly fucked.
The expertise with which everything is constructed, though, is what makes these pieces excel. Everything is where it should be and the combination is almost religious in its attention to detail. But before the duo gets too close to the sun, everything is burned to the ground and the process starts over. It's almost arrogant how often they fuck with your perception of what this record is, but that punk rock attitude is what helps take this to a different level. Just when you think you have it figured it out, Spiritual Church Movement is off to another disfigured frontier.
Over the course of these two sprawling sides, the cult of Perispirit is born. Ricardo Donoso and Luke Moldof are convinced that anything is possible and nothing is out of bounds. Spiritual Church Movement is their manifesto and at the end of it all, they are the fucking kings.
Mastered by James Plotkin and cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at D+M Berlin.
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Nova Scotian Arms has concocted a sprawling, sophisticated catalog of winding compositions and dizzying drones. Grant Evans, who is also 1/2 of Quiet Evenings and co-curator of the Hooker Vision label, is the brains behind the entire operation. Throughout numerous releases he has shown a consistent ability to keep listeners guessing as he explores endless sonic territories. With Cult Spectrum, Evans is drowning himself in a hazy aural sea.
Like much of his work, there is a very distinct mood on Cult Spectrum. This is funereal music that is stretched to its breaking point. Distant galaxies are buried underground in a delicate mix of sounds that are as cosmic as they are organic. This duality is at play straight-off with the masterful opener, "Gathering/Composition." Soaring in crystal skies on beds of hiss, each strained note from Evans' Rhodes piano that emerged from the murk is an anchor keeping the song and the mood gravity-stricken. It works to perfection, drawing in the listener immediately.
Tape loops and radio interference deliciously muddy the waters of Cult Spectrum. The 16+ minute burner, "Emulsion," combines all those and more into a cacophonous stew. Acoustic guitars circle around and die in the swirling synthetic drain. Each wave emerges in stages as Evans shows considerable compositional skill in the way the piece is put together. With "Overcast Strumming (1st Delay)" comes a melancholic, skyward glance. Electronic corridors take shape and find a simple beauty through tonal dichotomies. Blurred drones are puncuated by bursts of fuzz, working in tandem to find that sonic bliss.
If Cult Spectrum is Nova Scotian Arms' biggest stage and loudest statement then the message is coming through loud & clear. Grant Evans is a force to be reckoned with. This is the sound of dissonance sculpted and shaped into something far greater and leaves its mark long after the final, ghostly seconds of "Hearse Overdub (Decomposition)" fade away. Evans is digging a tunnel, heading straight for the sun
Mastered by Lawrence English and cut at D+M, pressed in Germany. Artwork by Grant Evans. Initial copies on caramel-colored vinyl.
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Over the past year-and-a-half, the duo of Dexter Brightman and Jair Espinoza have explored abstract electronics in increasingly new and interesting ways. Over the course of numerous tapes on labels such as Avant Archive, Neon Blossom, and others, the duo has combined the ideas of repetition and sound art and continually mutated them into something that is becoming increasingly difficult to pin down. With the recent “Tek No Muzik” 12” on Crazy Iris, mechanized acid was introduced in the mix. It is not techno music in any sense of the term, but is subversive electronic music aimed at overloading your aural receptors.
On this self-titled debut full-length, KPLR has been stripped down in more ways than one. Due to geographic barriers, Brightman is now on his own and if this record is an indication, he's operating at the peak of his powers. For this album, Brightman took inspiration from his daily environment. At his job he is subjected to continuous machine noises that, after hours of constant repetition, begin to morph into machine music. Repeated phrases, beats, and even harmonies start to find their way through the mire. This KPLR record takes those ideas and elevates them to something incredible.
These zonked-out digital acid malfunctions fit together like a puzzle. Each piece of debris manifests itself as part of a larger whole. It is music that is simultaneously cold and abrasive yet draws you, almost mechanically, so that you can't pull yourself away. With influences as far reaching as Merzbow and Ceephax, Brightman is searching for the one frequency to set everything else aflame.
KPLR is inquisitive and intuitive as it bounces rhythmically through the grid. It is hard to call this dance music as it's too discombobulated and fried. It is beautifully flawed and built on a web of endless, screeching circuits. Dexter Brightman is on his way to becoming part of the machine.
Mastered by Brad Rose and cut to vinyl at D+M Berlin. Original cover artwork by A. Bill Miller.
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