The first thing I ever heard from Xela was his remix of Machine Drum, which is about as far away as it’s pos­si­ble to get within the realm of elec­tron­ics as The Dead Sea. But yet…what attracted me to Xela’s remix that first time was his sense of atmos­phere and nar­ra­tive. Amidst the beats and the loop­ing Method Man sam­ple, there was a strongly emo­tional wash of elec­tron­ics. His fol­low­ing two albums, For Frosty Morn­ings and Sum­mer Nights and Tan­gled Wool, played with the jux­ta­po­si­tion of del­i­cate elec­tron­ics and gor­geous pieces of live instru­ments, espe­cially on the guitar-laden lat­ter album. The years since these albums has seen a shift/evolution in Xela’s sound, due in no small part, I’m sure, to his co-founding of WORD fave Type Records. The label’s aes­thetic of a sort of organic “con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal” is in full force on The Dead Sea, this time within the con­cept of a dark nar­ra­tive regard­ing a mys­te­ri­ous and hor­rific sea voy­age. In lis­ten­ing to this album, I was reminded of two things: “Tales of The Black Freighter” from Watch­men and Slint’s immor­tal “Good Morn­ing Cap­tain” from Spi­der­land. The moments of reflec­tion, fore­bod­ing and sur­real visions in both of those works are brought to a new level on The Dead Sea. I won’t go into review­ing indi­vid­ual songs or get too detailed (for that, be sure to check out Coke Machine Glow’s fan­tas­tic review). How­ever, I will say that this is the most uncin­e­matic cin­e­matic album I’ve heard for awhile. This com­pletely re-invents what “cin­e­matic” gen­er­ally means, and I think brings it back to what that descrip­tion should really mean for music: com­po­si­tions that tell a story through music alone. From the creep­ing first strains through the vaguely sea shanty sounds cou­pled with uneasy per­cus­sion, the washes of melan­choly strings and mourn­ful horns, all the way to the last gor­geous and pen­sive gui­tar piece, you are liv­ing this spooky jour­ney on the sea, attacked by god knows what, belea­guered, bro­ken, and grasp­ing for air. And you don’t even need the won­der­fully sim­ple writ­ten pieces from the book­let to envi­sion this. The music does it all. And oh yeah, Matthew Woodson’s art­work through­out is sub­lime, black and white, with a blood splat­tered disc for high­light. I didn’t get the vinyl, but appar­ently the LP ver­sion is on red vinyl, even. Get it at Bent Crayon in the US, or Boomkat in Europe.

Some­thing I’ve noticed about Cau­ral is that every release I’ve heard of his is dif­fer­ent. Even though some of them don’t imme­di­ately grab me, it becomes clear that he is oper­at­ing on a unique and exper­i­men­tal level that takes time to appre­ci­ate. The more you hear the detail, the more arrest­ing his work becomes. From the odd struc­tures of his Paint EP, to the crusty beat work­outs of Stars On My Ceil­ing, fol­low­ing through to the col­lec­tion of glitchy and dense sketches and unre­leased mate­r­ial on Remem­ber­ing Today. His lat­est, Mir­rors For Eyes, feels like some­thing wholly formed from all of his exper­i­ments through the years, pre­sent­ing us with a lay­ered and son­i­cally excit­ing mael­strom of beats, voices, and noise. The float­ing dimen­sional sound of “Dead Armies” and ““Re-Experience Any Moment You Choose” remind me of Prefuse 73, but tem­pered organ­i­cally into a kind of psy­che­delic jam band freak­out. “Cold Hands,” “Cruel Fate of Spring,” and “Only Time Will Know” fea­ture heart-stopping guest singers and paint pic­tures of the melan­choly and nos­tal­gic brain behind the music. The beats bring to mind chain and wood meshed with wire, the melodies swirl and twist recall­ing moments of Boards of Canada. This is truly an album for head­phones. Even now, while lis­ten­ing and writ­ing this, I’m find­ing more and more to love and more to mar­vel at. It’s not quite hip hop, not quite IDM, not quite any­thing you’ve ever heard, a heady brew of sound and emo­tion. Out on Mush Records and very recommended.

I know vir­tu­ally noth­ing about Encre. After hear­ing this gor­geous album I did a lit­tle research to see what else is out there that he did, and was more con­fused than when I started. Seems his out­put is incred­i­bly var­ied, from exper­i­men­tal folk type stuff to even more extreme elec­tronic manip­u­la­tion, none of which sounded very much like Plexus II to my ears. How­ever, this excel­lent release on Svarte Grenier’s Mias­mah record label can stand on it’s own as a sin­gu­larly spe­cial piece of music. Con­sist­ing of one 40 minute track, it’s a slowly undu­lat­ing sym­phony of elec­tron­ics, found sounds, and strings. There are two main move­ments, bridged by a short inter­lude, and capped by a drift­ing ambi­ent sound record­ing outro. It’s the type of thing that you would think would work solely as back­ground music to read­ing or work­ing or whatever…however, it turns out to be end­lessly fas­ci­nat­ing, keep­ing me just star­ing at the space from which the sound is ema­nat­ing from. To call it cin­e­matic belies how much it stands on it’s own with­out need of visu­als or sup­port. Get it at Bent Crayon in the US, and Boomkat in Europe. Check some excerpts here. Enjoy.
“Plexus II — Excerpt One” | “Plexus II — Excerpt Two” (mp3)