“Another stroke of genius resulting from an artists' ability to exploit the many capacities of modular synths and sequencers”
1 Hyperincandescent 21:58
2 Floating in the Meme Pool 21:54
(CD/DDL/ 180gr Vinyl 43:52) (V.F.)
(Exp. Modular Synth Music)
A mixture of cracklings and doodles tones is igniting the fascinating chant of a synthesized nightingale in the opening of the title-track of this new CD from the England label DiN. Already, we have to sharpen our ears. Wrapped in multiple sequenced loops, this magnetizing air gets encircled by a fauna of the most improbable tonalities all painted of pastel colors. The first 5 minutes of the title are thus harmoniously smeared by a heap of sound spots which reflect rather well the CD front cover of this fascinating sound mosaic from Stephen James Buckley who likes to play around our ears under the moniker of Polypores. A first mutation in HYPERINCANDESCENT takes place around the 5th minute when a texture of Lounge swings between our ears before tumbling towards a short phase of sound effects belonging to a tribe of another galaxy and to continue its way towards a texture of ethereal ambiences. Like what the extremes cohabit wonderfully here! This statement will be even more difficult to explain with Floating in the Meme Pool. But in the meantime, a nice flute line adorns this meditative passage and joins this strange rhythm conceived on various random beats that animates the ambiences after the 10th minute. Its joyful air gives a psychedelic party look to the inhabitants of a village drawn with LSD ink. A short illusory period before a throat full of buzzing drones fills our ears for the next 4 minutes of this 3rd transformation of Hyperincandescent. A seraphic texture as seductive as the first one then invades our ears a few seconds after the 16th minute. This last phase offers arpeggios sliding on a shimmering water where a child-centaur gratifies the ambiences of another very beautiful air of an enchanting flute. Sound decorations, like streamers and graffitis for a children's party without laughter, adorn this moment which also gives off a slight spectral hint with this air rolling in magnetizing loops that a few percussive chords structure in a pendulum for a fictitious clock. A series of bass-pulses activates a rhythmic lever as involving as bewitching on this good meditative phase which breathes by a New-Age plated in the universe of Psybient.
There are things that cannot be invented? You'd have to say that to Ian Boddy who guides DiN's destiny to bring his label to frontiers that even the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 never thought to explore. If you follow the activities of this label that keeps on reinventing, transcending the art of EM, Polypores is not completely unknown to you since the talented English musician offered a track, Clocks, Unravelling, on the Tone Science Module No.5 Integers and Quotients last year. And HYPERINCANDESCENT seems to come out of the visions of this track with 2 long exploratory structures that have fun taking unpredictable tangents where the term psychedelic reinvents itself in contemporary sonic chaos and where the terms chirping and experimentation become distant ancestors. Anti-musical? Hum... You have to discover, to hear more of it because if the title-track can be tamed after a few tries, it is quite different with the very audacious Floating in the Meme Pool which starts with the path undertaken by the finale of Hyperincandescent. A gargantuan layer of organ spreads its mantle of resonant prism that flows in fits and starts to welcome a swarm of pulsations woven so tightly that the rhythm implodes in a textile as suffocating as a spastic neurosis. Intense, rhythmless and filled with sterile ripples that undulate in the graceful movement of a slightly drunken maestro, this opening breathes of its contradictions over a distance of more or less 5 minutes. A xylophone in madness sounds the charge abruptly some 15 seconds later. Its unbridled movement is as frenetic as a dance of cannibals about to eat. A bass-pulse line sticks to it, adding a fluidity to the flow that is wrapped in a dance of chimes whose tinkles meet a laconic choreography of corks coiling in a tight rubber case. If you find these terms strange and excessive, they are at the height of this tissue of sounds and sequences that forge a boiling pulsating rhythm that a sitar envelops with its patchoulis caresses some 4 minutes later. Thus, Floating in the Meme Pool goes through a meditative phase filled with that hippie scent of the 70's that gradually fills up with twists, warbles and synthesized loops in a style that transcends the territories of Psybient. The pulsating rhythm reappears even more vividly a few seconds before reaching the 15th minute. At first lively, the bass-sequences flow with a tasty difficulty that almost stops the flow in a race where the elastic tube abounds in elbows and other traps to slow down the ephemeral snarl of the movement that loses its life in a pocket of static noises about 15 seconds before the 18th minute. This is the entry point for an atmospheric finale guided by a more musical synth pad that flows into an idle tranquility reminding us that everything that makes a din eventually becomes a source of silence.
More than a musical adventure for ears eager for new sonic spaces, as well as musical, HYPERINCANDESCENT is another stroke of genius resulting from the artists' ability to exploit the many capacities of modular synths and sequencers. Polypores does not give no quarter by offering an album with the excessiveness of this art which is as much able to astonish as to allure by patching up textures whose abrupt cuts finish by welding in a fascinating musicality.
Sylvain Lupari (May 19th, 2022) ****¼*
Available at DiN Records