SINGLES CRUISE 05.03.19
KRIKL - "INFINITE"
"Infinite " is a peek into a larger conceptual project that the L.A. based producer has been forming out of minute-long instagram experiments composed from processing tape loops through digital software. "Infinite" expands delicate looped guitar lines into a grander, encompassing sea of sounds that pool and wash over the track with the analog hiss of tape running over tired magnets. It's a beautiful and stately piece of music that I am excited to take its full shape.
JOUSKA - "TITANICS"
The Oslo-based experimental pop duo is determined to get us to move exhausted limbs even if that means moving through the wet concrete of depression and heartbreak. "Titanics" features enough lifting arpeggios, pitch-shifted vocals, intersecting beat patterns to raise the sunken ocean liner. Giving into the infectious melody and beat of this track is not a momentary abandonment and an abiding trust in synth-pop.
URSIDAE - "NOCTUA"
Weaving deep forest sounds into Ursidae's polyrhyhthmic explorations, "Noctua" builds and contracts along those lines. Folding in acoustic percussive lines and forest field recordings, the track expands until it reaches a near hypnotic melding of natural and digital. While quite possibly best consumed during a deep forest rave, "Noctua" is perfect for a five minute headphone trip.
ILLUMININE - "THE MANY DEATHS OF LETTING GO (FEAT. HANNA CORINNE)
On "The Many Deaths of Letting Go" the Flemish composer underscores Hanna Corinne's beautiful and breathy vocals with an imbuing tonal shift and synthesizer flourishes that showcase and center the song's emotional center. Acceptance that comes after allowing yourself to mourn following a major life event. Beautiful work from a composer and producer finding his footing at the crossroads of post-rock and neo-classical music.
CENES - "SPARKS"
Sustained by droning overtones, tension-filled strings, the delicate placement of a single piano note, "Sparks" is all gliding lift and sway. Featuring violinist Fiona Brice, cellist Tony Woolard and composer / producer Jim Perkins, the London trio call on artists like A Winged Victory for the Sullen to inform this composition that straddles the line between ambient-drone and tightly composed minimalist neo-classical works.
FELIX MARTINZ - "KRIMML"
During the slow rise and build to the track's major melody, the Swedish composer allows swelling waves of delay and drone wash over tiny micro-melodic piano flourishes - each major shift mirrored by a ghostly doubling of itself. The melody, a simple but stately thing, appears as a shining object through the mist of hazy drones and analog synths with long, slow-death decays. Highly recommended.
VARIANT SEA - "GHOSTS"
Splitting time between Iceland and Ireland, this pen pal relationship between Luke Duffy and Shell Dooley has produced beautifully aching compositions that skirt the edge between post-rock and classical music. "Ghosts" marries roaring, e-bow treated guitar melodies above Duffy's arpeggios that gather in intensity as the song draws together all the volume in the room for it's triumphant climax.
ALMANACS - "THIS TOWN IS ABOUT TO CRY"
Honduran synth artist Wilmer Murillo drills deep into sine wave pay dirt on "This Town Is About to Cry". Layer after layer of tonal variations, hidden arpeggios, slides from register to register are kept orbiting around a tonal center that is pure processed bliss. It's hard to find the outer limits of this core tonal nexus, but it keeps all of the floating microtonal variations, tiny runs on arpeggiated sequences tethered within short reach. Beautiful stuff.
