Nothing but epics here. Remember those Yes albums with the Roger Dean gatefold covers? Well, Topographic Oceans just got mapped. Relayer got real. Close to the Edge becomes the fall it only hinted at when your sixteen-year-old self first opened that cover. Dean would have a field day with this. Time holds in suspension and the Word is BE! (And it is). The sounds on this recording are Progressive — with a capital “P” — but there are no Mellotrons. No capes. Moogs? Unlikely. Rickenbackers, Gibsons? No. Only the orphan, cause-less cries of a world between you and the angelic. Ingrid Drese: bridge maker par excellence. […]

The title invokes an ancient Chinese puzzle consisting of seven pieces: five triangles and two quadrilaterals. Together they form a square, but when separated the pieces can be rearranged into a myriad of possible formations. Like the tangram, the music on this album shifts, morphs, and fractalizes throughout its entirety. Like Bergson’s durée, there is no underlying constant — only continuous change. Every so often, I come across a recording that initiates a sense of becoming, in which each moment transforms the whole. The sounds on Tangram are not separated into isolated units, rather each sound carries the previous sounds with it, unfolding like a flow rather than a series of discreet events. “Have a nice trip” is the usual send-off, but in the tangram it’s redundant. The trip is always nice. […]

Monique Jean’s black thread terminates at a portal to the outside where an industrial tableau of gears, pulleys, springs, turbines, belts, and steam materializes. Here, in this world, natural organic life is sidelined. It’s there, somehow, subsisting in this place, in the margins, but look around; it’s all machine. Running hot during the day, cooler at night, this machine is self-replicating. An elevated viewpoint might expose its borders, but the borders are forever expanding. The viewpoint will be subsumed quickly. This machine breathes itself forward in all directions and upward until land is no more, life is no more, and atmosphere is swapped out for mech. Purpose forgotten, here, God is blacksmith. […]

This is the first of several releases on the great empreintes DIGITALes label. It is an album of quiet urgency, although it doesn’t begin that way. Sweeping, wide angle vistas, massive enough to see entire weather systems born, disperse, and die give way to dark liquid interiors. These internal places are explored with sound as a beacon, leading and lighting the way, but only dimly. There is a dark beauty stretched across these planes, like a black satin thread. A lifeline to the day world left behind. Keep it close; you may need it. […]

Similar to Monique Jean’s recording, this album explores a deeper nightside — one buried beneath the rubble of memory and habit. A small chaos brews, a quiet apocalypse, buried underground, spins and whirls, sending out circular ripples from below. Within this eternally dark space are memories wrought in movement. Most remain hidden — fleeting traces of activity that linger at the periphery. Some show themselves through motion, through dance. Turcotte taps into this nocturnal world, tracing systems of thought that may, or may not, surface. Much is held back, but what is shown, what surfaces, holds value beyond measure. Listen, you may be surprised. […]