Been wanting to use this image by TagliaMani for a while — thanks to the ever wonderful 50 Watts.

Quickly (in 20JFG time*) following on from last week’s post about Peepholes‘ laboratory-fresh detour, Tunnels, comes the Moon Gangs remix.

Combining a decaying Techno drum sequence — seemingly heard from beneath midnight-black ocean waves — with reconstructed Chi-House synth hooks, Tunnels is turned from a cyclopean night drive into something (even) more cosmic.  Which you’d expect from Moon Gangs.  Katia’s vocal forced into a distant endless loop forming a hymn in some celestial cathedral that’s incrementally more disturbing as its grove remains locked.  The remix ends with a final breakdown that’s soaring and trembling and extremely delicate all at once; anchored with reverb heavy handclaps: an archeological reconstruction of pop played at entirely the wrong speed.

Peepholes – Tunnels (Moon Gangs Remix)

Cabaal are part of a thankfully pretty strong tradition of incredible records dropping, unheralded, into our inbox.  We do our best to scan through everything that doesn’t get filtered away by the legions of autonomous (and often rebellious) drones we’ve installed to keep the spam from the door.  And quite frequently we’re rewarded with records as good as Cabaal’s Light Pollution.

Light Pollution’s final track is called SOMA and it’s beautiful in a way Balam Acab’s Sea Birds (Sun) is beautiful.

Inescapably drawn to the points of critical comparison that orbit the mutant strand of modern music that Tri Angle have curated: this is vast, emotive music that owes as much to chopped and screwed epics as it is indebted to minimalist electronic compositions.

SOMA oscillates its way into being; gorgeous synth waves washing over a blank landscape.  Larger structures slowly appear: towers that provide some perspective.  Chimes orbit them, drifting and darting around them like playful spectres.  A bass throb rises up (relatively briefly) to clear the way for a vast, tape delayed procession to pass between our synthetic towers — both beat and vocal slowed to a narcotic drawl.  A plaintive torch song just about visible among all the temporal remapping.  And then the pixilated echo of a rave turns up and everything goes sublime.

Cabaal – SOMA

* which deviates from the logarithmic hype of internet time in that the distance between two points in real time rapidly decreases the further they initially appear apart.  Story of our life really.

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with Upset the Rhythm