Cesar Alexandre/Mount Shrine: In Memoriam

Sometimes, the irony of existence makes me weep.

Mount Shrine’s discography played a big part in helping me cope with the arrival of Covid.

Recently, the talented artist behind Mount Shrine, Cesar Alexandre, passed away recently in Brazil….a victim of Covid.

I was stricken by this news.

Over the last few years, I’d been moving away from dark ambient to other genres, and taking my writing focus in new directions. During that time, however, Mount Shrine was one of the artists I listened to consistently and often. This tendency increased as Covid descended, society shut down, and I withdrew to telework full-time, away from direct human contact. During this bizarre, difficult, and heartbreaking stage of history, a playlist of Mount Shrine’s discography was one of the items in heaviest rotation on my Spotify. The music was immersive without being demanding, escapist but not too alien, comforting without being sentimental. I’ve often thought the best ambient music lies somewhere between light and dark, containing elements of both without catering too strongly to either. Mount Shrine is nestled perfectly in the border between bright and shadow, with rare and enviable ease.

When I reviewed Mount Shrine’s 2018 album Winter Restlessness here – the first of three sublime albums that Cesar released on the highly regarded Cryo Chamber label – I considered it to be well-done, but familiar and rather unambitious. Years later, I came to realize I hadn’t given Winter Restlessness the attention it deserved. I hadn’t listened to it deeply enough. Now that it’s sunk into my psyche, I hear it for what it is: an ode to the beauty of melancholy and the eternal bonds that connect all of us. The pads wander with careful grace, illuminated by buried static and ghostly voices that became a trademark for Cesar’s ambient side. The radio samples became more pronounced on subsequent releases, sometimes risking the gentle immersion Mount Shrine achieved so elegantly, but on Winter Restlessness, the balance of the otherworldly and the familiar is perfect.

Slowly, I began to understand precisely how much Cesar’s music meant to me, and just how magnificent and profound it is.

Some artists and albums rise and fall in one’s playlists, ephemeral and fleeting, tied to a particular event or time, fading along with memory. Others stay with you, aligning with some deep part of yourself so cleanly and easily that you aren’t ever really sure when and how it happened. You realize one day that it just is. A part of you has moved aside to allow it to integrate. It’s like falling in love. The cosmos just falls into place. So is it for me with Mount Shrine. Even before Cesar’s untimely death – is death ever timely? – I’d realized that I’ll be listening to Mount Shrine for the rest of my life. That is a precious thing to discover.

Cesar recorded under a variety of names, including vaporwave – Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza is probably his best-known in that style – but while excellent examples of experimentation, none of them wedged themselves as snugly into my fibers as Mount Shrine. Through Mount Shrine’s reflective melancholy, Cesar understands isolation, but through its bursts of radio chatter pulled from the ether, he also understands connection. His sounds of rain celebrate the natural world, and the static represents humankind’s technological prowess. When this balance is considered alongside Mount Shrine’s refusal to slide too far into the gloom or the light, the listening experience is enhanced, reflecting the joy and pain of the human condition, condensed into sound. Mount Shrine is lament and celebration in equal measure; a hymn lauding both nature and the human capacity for achivement. With this in mind, it’s no wonder the music has remained close to me over the years; it always has something to give, regardless of my frame of mind.

While ambient music often doesn’t fall into clean categories like “favorite album” or “favorite track” – Mount Shrine works equally well listened to as albums or as a random playlist – perhaps the best example of Cesar’s singular genius is the track “Earth Bridge” from his 2020 album Shortwave Ruins. The captured voices, speaking a language I don’t understand but am nonetheless warmed by, drift lazily through cracks and pops and layered buzzes, with the rain-sounds Cesar loved so much sighing in the background. The keys emerge organically, slowly building from a backing drone to soaring pads, perfectly paced, coaxing the track forward through dense haze to a calming place where light falls in glinting waves. And somewhere near, human presence, plucked from the air, embedded into one’s consciousness. You are alone, and you are not. We live our lives, apart and together, all at once. Thus, Mount Shrine reminds us of the beauty of being human.

Cesar’s last release, to my knowledge, was under a new project, Yasu Ether, titled All That’s Here Will Be Sunlight. He wrote on the Shimmering Moods Bandcamp page that the music was made during a relaxed time of his life. It’s bittersweet that this was his final gift to the world, and I’m grateful it came from a positive place for him. The album takes all of what makes Mount Shrine special and turns up the warmth and brightness. It doesn’t seem to quite satisfy on the level of Mount Shrine, but perhaps that’s because I’m not quite ready for it. One day, I might continue learning from Cesar’s grace and wisdom.

Cesar, you left plenty of sunlight in the world for all of us, and remind us that light cannot exist without shade. To live is to seek balance – a balance you captured deftly and beautifully in the sounds you shared.

Thank you.

Rest in peace.

Dan Terminus – Automated Refrains

Blood Music, 2017

The best albums, in my opinion, cater to no particular style. They may include elements of pre-established templates, but push the envelope towards something unique. It’s not easy. While I’m a fan of genre as much as anyone, I find myself drawn to artists and albums that combine and innovate.

Dan Terminus is one of these. If you listen to his earlier releases, such as The Darkest Benthic Division and Stratospheric Cannon Symphony, you’d encounter some intriguing compositions that pull from multiple sources but seem comfortable with allowing themselves to be defined thusly. With The Wrath of Code, however, Dan Terminus found himself in altogether uncharted territory, in places even his French contemporary Perturbator seemed reluctant to go. The Wrath of Code is a hypersonic cruise missile of rhythm and energy, coursing through dizzying heights of sequence and percussion, all with a powerful cinematic bent.

That was just the beginning. Automated Refrains is the next release from Dan Terminus, and when considering his discography as a whole, everything he’d done previously was leading to this. An exhilarating combination of post-industrial grit, retrowave sci-fi, and cinematic ambient, Automated Refrains is a dense and captivating beast. “Fall of the Ancient World” has the epic scope of soundtracks, with stirring solemn keyboards punctuated by the buried intricate percussion that has marked Dan Terminus’ work since the beginning. While these elements would be enough on their own, a South American-style flute soon enters the fray, its soothing notes adding a dimension that pushes the composition over the top, especially when these melodies are echoed by chip-tune synths which soon morph into EBM sequences and ambient synth washes. Dan Terminus has announced his evolution with flair.

“Fall of the Ancient World” is merely the launch pad for the armada that is Automated Refrains. “Margaritifer” charges along a cyberpunk labyrinth with reckless abandon; this is the closest Dan Terminus allows himself to come to the controlled freneticism of Perturbator, but Dan Terminus has always shown restraint in the name of experimentation. “Angelus” is nothing less than anthemic bliss, its slow paced thudding drums flanked by post-industrial bass-lines and arrogant keyboards, but tempered by melodic and looped structures that show that Dan Terminus is at home in his virtual sonic playground.

We then encounter the album’s heart, the eight-minute hymn “Grimoire Blanc.” This is Dan Terminus at the height of his inventive powers, a masterpiece of unexpected shifts and detail, of bombastic drums and power-laden synths, of electro-tinged harpsichord and voice samples, of quiet interludes and swelling arches of programming. It’s a track so packed with twists and detail, it seems twice as long as it is, and upon repeat listens, the amount of content stuns, all without upsetting the atmosphere. Simply put, this is arguably one of the greatest tracks in this style, bar none.

Of course, it’s expected to have a bit of a comedown from such heights. “Friendship Through Clear Plastic Walls” is slower of pace but stronger in feel, until the twin-barrel blasts of “Vesubian” and “Deus Mecanicus” herald the shock-grenade stunner “Electronic Snow”, which features Dan Terminus’ most innovative drum programming alongside the plucked-bass synth that defined “The Chasm,” one of the best tracks from The Wrath of Code. “Refuge” and “Dirge of the Ancient Machines” bring Automated Refrains to the most satisfying of closes, promising to return the listener to its alternate-dimension state of mind soon enough.

Automated Refrains is kaleidoscopic in scope and scintillating in execution; Luca Carey’s dizzying Lovecraft-on-LSD artwork is the perfect visual complement. From its quietly punching drumwork – a fine-tuned fusion of snare, bass, and hi-hat that clicks, thuds, hisses, and snaps with alien momentum – to its strange otherworldly aesthetic and controlled cyborg imprinting, the album marks quite a conundrum for Dan Terminus, who’s been on a gradual rise since he arrived on the scene: what the heck is he going to do next? I was suspicious at the notion that he could top The Wrath of Code, and he pulled that off with shocking ease. I think I’ve learned my lesson.

Mount Shrine – Winter Restlessness

Cryo Chamber, 2018

Sometimes, predictability is a good thing.

I’m all for experimentation and new adventures, but in this hectic world, there are moments when it’s best to lean on something familiar. Not everything is intended to expand your mind and life experience, and not everything has to break new ground to have merit. You know that favorite restaurant you frequent? That comfortable pair of shoes? The person you might share your life with? That’s the point I’m reinforcing.

With this in mind, that’s not to imply that Winter Restlessness by Mount Shrine is going to be your new best friend. However, its strength lies in its familiarity; the ease with which it sockets itself into your consciousness, the sense of recalled nostalgia, the consistency of its temperament. Mount Shrine is a Brazilian project which has released several albums of gray-tinted slow-motion nature-themed ambient, but that was enough to capture the attention of Cryo Chamber.

Winter Restlessness haunts a realm somewhere between Kave’s Dismal Radiance, Kammarheit’s ghost-steeped landscapes, and Sleep Research Facility’s arctic epic Deep Frieze. However, Mount Shrine has none of the desolation of Kave, the sepulchral ruinous reflection of Kammarheit, nor the density of SRF. The first few moments of the first track, “Winter Restlessness,” provides an exacting example of what the album is: a bed of analog loops merged with a gentle river of assorted static and distant field-recorded sources like rain and thunder. The track winds its way languorously through drifting haze, with a variety of samples and loops waking and slumbering with muted grace. At ten minutes long, the track feels shorter, due to the singular mood and Mount Shrine’s firm grasp of gradual evolution.

Atmosphere established, the album reveals itself one shade at a time. While it might seem an odd choice to release a winter-themed album in the middle of July, the season is inconsequential; it meshes easily with slanted afternoon light through trees, gently lapping waves, and breathtaking mountainous vistas (I’ve made a point of experiencing each accompanied by Mount Shrine, and Winter Restlessness fits them all with equal ease).

Does “Moon’s Distrust,” the second track, sound the same as its predecessor? Basically, yes. The keys are slightly different, but the quiet reflectiveness remains the same. The same applies to “The Silence Between Our Houses”, “Foggy Deck,” and the rest of the album. However, this should not be taken as criticism; rather, Mount Shrine has a clear understanding of what form and function Winter Restlessness was made to fulfill, and if you listen closely (which can be difficult, given the album’s tendency to fade into your headspace), you’ll notice how precisely it is directed, and how cleverly it is assembled. The album works best when the field recordings share the air equally, and perhaps the rain samples of “Lifeless Indoors” are a shade too harsh, but that’s really all the criticism I can level at this majestically constructed waking dream.

Winter Restlessness is anti-progressive, anti-stimulation, and anti-groundbreaking, but those are all to its merit. I’ve heard too many albums in this genre that try too hard at creating a synthetic space, or seem content to flaunt technical skill or ambitious concept. Many artists have attempted to create a similar sensation, but are either too busy or too soporific. Mount Shrine is content with immersing the listener in a particular state, a drifting odyssey through an indistinct territory where the noise of modern culture is reduced to a whisper, and the serenity of the world’s unseen places encourage reflection and detachment. Winter Restlessness achieves an all-too-rare balance between holding too tight and letting go too soon. I, for one, couldn’t be more grateful.

Tor Lundvall – A Dark Place

DAIS Records (DAIS110), 2018

A new Tor Lundvall album is always an intriguing mystery. His discography runs the gamut from instrumental ambient to vocal synthpop to a combination of the two, but the albums slip between the conventions of genre – a fine fit, considering the shadowed and ghostly template that pervades the music. There has always been something compellingly uncertain about Lundvall’s music; a large part of the listening attraction, as the listener is presented a landscape in which to roam, free to discover secrets and details present only in her or his head.

When word emerged that Lundvall’s new album would mark a return to his vocal style, I’m betting eyebrows were raised. I know mine were. Not in a disappointing way, mind you, but as it had been nine years since the last album in this format, Sleeping and Hiding, the news was a surprise, especially considering that Lundvall had entered new territories of his trademark spectral-minimalist instrumental ambient. I must also confess that I have always preferred Lundvall’s music to his vocals, with the exception of the sublime Yule EP, so when A Dark Place arrived, I approached it with the slightest edge of hesitation.

My concerns quickly evaporated. A Dark Place is not only the best of Lundvall’s vocal work, it is the most emotional music he’s ever produced, and it is a refined display of his amorphous ambient style. In describing the album, Lundvall says:

Finding the words to describe this album is almost as difficult as the past couple of years. There is a lot of pain, fear and sadness wrapped into these eight songs. More so than usual, I think. The loss of my father in 2015 and coping with his absence certainly hangs heavily here.

This is a welcome insight, especially considering Lundvall’s traditionally reclusive nature, and it sets the mood for what is to come.

Lundvall’s lyrics have taken on a new sophistication. They are delivered in rhyming couplets drenched in reverb, and are given ample space by the music. Lundvall’s high voice follows delicate melodies with confident ease; he has never sounded this comfortable. As Lundvall is also a practiced painter, there’s a stark visual quality to his minimal poetry, often using motifs of color and light. However, there’s an added layer to A Dark Place: it appears that in some cases, the words are spoken by one who has lost someone dear, while in others, the spirit itself is the one mourning. The split nature of the ghostly face gracing the album’s cover – Lundvall always creates the art for his albums, and sometimes his paintings influence his music – seems to support such a duality. Whether the face is half Lundvall and half Lundvall’s departed father is open to interpretation, but this two-sided theme is strongly apparent throughout A Dark Place.

Compared to Lundvall’s ambient-leaning work (Empty City, The Shipyard), A Dark Place is much more structured. An unobtrusive beat sets the tempo, plodding away thoughtfully, and Lundvall surrounds it with the vaporous synth washes and odd bits of samples that have always defined his music. The music is more focused and grounded, as it is the foundation for the vocals, but it’s immediately obvious that A Dark Place owes a great deal to the recent albums The Park, The Violet-Blue House, and Rain Studies. The same hazy sense of place and half-lit atmosphere is present, but Lundvall builds on these tropes with electric guitar – a surprise that is included thoughtfully and naturally – and an increased but gentle presence of processed noise (most prevalent on “The Moment”). From the perfectly paced bassline, crackling static, and synth tones of “Negative Moon” to the open pastoral night-space of “Haunted By The Sky”, Lundvall’s music is as evocative as ever.

A Dark Place belies its title. Even when Lundvall sings about “pale fingers sharp as knives”, the music never revels in its darkness, always reaching out from the shadows. Lundvall’s music has been called cold and impersonal in the past, but these critiques cannot be applied to this graceful album. Structurally, it’s a culmination of what has given Lundvall’s music its unique sound; it acknowledges the past while remaining experimental, and has found an ideal balance between music and voice. The poignant longing of “The Next World” would seem to be voiced by both the living and the dead; it’s a celebration of life from the perspective of what comes after, and I’d argue it’s the most touching song Lundvall has ever written. The track is a fitting closure to what is, ultimately, as moving a portrait of loss as we’re ever likely to hear. A Dark Place is a reminder that there cannot be dark without light, and Lundvall has crafted a guide for acceptance.

Pilotpriest – Trans

bandcamp, 2016

When you listen to Pilotpriest’s album Trans, the cinematic angle is clear. Film often acts as an influence for experimental electronic music circles, but it’s a little different here. Pilotpriest is the musical outlet of Anthony Scott Burns, who is a visual effects artist and filmmaker who has worked on movies such as The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh and the horror anthology Holidays.

Trans is a soundtrack to a science fiction film that exists only in Burns’ mind (and ours, by extension). Despite its lo-fi tendencies and retro-analog sound, the composition is post-modern, bringing to mind genre artists like Oxyd, Polygon, and Forma Tadre. High praise, yes, but Pilotpriest belongs in that conversation, for Trans is a quietly stunning work.

The track that drew me to this album is “Now Be The Light,” an immediately arresting and melancholic space-opera anthem built around a wistful sing-song voice sample. Burns slowly surrounds the sample with a variety of carefully shaped sequences and keyboard chords, anchored by bass-synth and percussive loops, coaxing the track toward thrilling pinnacles before diving into slow-motion near-silence, only to ascend anew like a scintillating digital phoenix. As the track progresses, it always circles back to the little robotic tune, perhaps voiced by some infinitely lonelier cousin of WALL-E. Each component serves as foundation and amplification for this tiny voice, and the creative and technical spark flashes bright and often, gliding gracefully through its passages with the ease and wonder of breathing. This is the kind of track that you can listen to just to appreciate how well everything fits together – it’s neither too long nor too short, neither too experimental nor too predictable, and its sense of myriad rhythms impeccably wrought – but it’s more than its structure, tapping into the shared human experience in a way that all artists strive for but few achieve. For all its disparate parts, “Now Be The Light” is a singular and natural track, the kind that accompanies you through the day and welcomes you each time you plug in to revisit. I have a short list of electronic tracks that I consider perfect, and “Now Be The Light” holds a permanent place on it.

And this is just the beginning. “Now Be The Light” is the second of twelve tracks on Trans, and while the rest of the album never quite reaches the interstellar heights of “Now Be The Light,” Pilotpriest is quickly proven to be no mere one-hit wonder. Trans is a post-industrial classic alongside Oxyd’s Larva, Forma Tadre’s Navigator, and Polygon’s [images], managing a timeless sound with a fresh take on expression and assemblage. Most of the tracks on Trans are over five minutes in length, and all are solemn yet somehow playful outer-space anthems. Slow tempo and untreated piano are commonplace, the latter often twisting through melancholic melodies giving voice to the near-human yearnings of computers tasked to operate defunct and forgotten interstellar ghost ships for eternity, with nothing but their own memories to accompany them. Pilotpriest’s muses are the descendants of Kraftwerk’s playful man-machine, heir to infinite possibility but removed from history by error and circumstance. “Entrance” is particularly effective at expressing this bittersweet sadness, a tone enhanced when Burns’ lost AIs insert fragments of the voices of their long-gone human masters into the music, such as the trip-hoppish IDM hymns “I Am You” and “Skin.” Elsewhere, 4/4 structures are the backbone for “Lipstick” and “Strangle Part Two,” but these are crystalline designs, much too intricate for the raw power of the dancefloor.

Trans is a hidden classic, a burnished gem lost in a corner of the internet. Pilotpriest might not be a well-known name among post-industrial circles, but Burns’ project is more than deserving. Perhaps Trans is a bit too long, owing to the three comparatively rote bonus tracks, and perhaps the tone is a bit static, but when the music is so grounded, satisfying, and consistently brilliant, these issues cease being issues at all. Any album that not only contains a track like “Now Be The Light” but somehow manages to maintain the bar it sets is something rare and special. Pilotpriest is a particularly well-named project. Trans is a deeply reverential work, moving forward while embracing history and mourning its passage.

Timecop1983 – Running in the Dark

bandcamp, 2016

We live in an age that seems to suffer from an identity crisis. The cause of this is certainly debatable, but it’s likely due to many factors: the splintering of culture, the breakneck speed of modern life, the constant search for immediate meaning, the constantly growing population…..we can go on and on. Whatever the cause, more people are looking backward than ever before, and there comes a point when you wonder why.

The Eighties are a popular target, and it’s not just for nostalgic purposes (though I freely confess this is certainly a factor for me). Many people exist who are drawn to the 1980s of the United States in spite of the fact they were born in the following decades. Clearly, there is a reason.

Beyond the decadence of shows like Miami Vice, which exhibits indulgent materialism and the perceived cool that came with it, were a wide range of movies that were personal and deeply genuine, with an emotional spectrum created by the emerging sound of synth-based new wave music. The music has become to symbolize the coming-of-age angst of the films, while also recalling open white linen jackets and neon-streaked lines of slick Ferraris cruising the downtown strip. These are powerful connections, regardless of their origin.

Jordy Leenaerts has no doubt felt these effects. It’s tough to determine whether the Dutch artist, who records as Timecop1983, encountered the Eighties first-hand or through the ever-expanding retro scene lead by works such as Mitch Murder’s musical discography and Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Drive. We must remember, however, that examples such as these are undoubtedly modern works which are inspired by the Eighties rather than simply mimicking them.

Timecop1983 has carved its own corner into this burgeoning scene by focusing on what Leenaerts calls “a melancholic and romantic feeling” perhaps best expressed by the filmography of John Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). In Hughes’ films, there’s a good deal of idealistic longing expressed by the main characters, who struggle to find themselves while caught in a web of social expectation, among other stresses of the industrialized West. Hughes’ films are noted for their soundtracks, often brought to fierce emotive life by bands of the time, and Timecop1983 aims to recapture this fiery vulnerability that has likely been experienced by every modern young person in some manner or other.

Running in the Dark is a seven-track EP of instrumental songs that Leenaerts composed for his live performances. What’s remarkable is how well these tracks fit together; they are inspired, infectious, and cleverly assembled. The 80s synths are deliciously airy, drifting through simple but affecting melodies within a pop framework; sometimes Timecop1983 teams with synthwave vocalists, and while these instances are remarkable indeed, the project’s strength lies in its instrumentation, as it is here. The keyboards are anchored by thudding 4/4 beats that powerfully offset the music’s grace; these are delicate but potent emotions, and the music portrays this perfectly. While retro/modern acts like Perturbator and, at times, Mitch Murder himself, focus on the sci-fi or action-film culture of the Eighties, Timecop1983 is concerned with the battleground inside, always restraining aggression in favor of mood.

“Come With Me” is both anthemic and hopeful, “Running in the Dark” swells with escapist drama, and “Dimensions” inspires and thrills with its glittering yet introspective refrain. And yet, the EP is not simply a tribute to the 80s, but also a product of the times that have passed since. Leenaerts keeps the listener guessing with percussive shifts, filtering effects, techno-inspired loops (“Somewhere We Can Go”) and a refined cinematic angle (“Visions”). But Timecop1983 is in no way defined by studio trickery. Regardless of the modern stylistic touches, the music’s heart thumps strong and clear: this is music about emerging and discovering, about recalling past loves, about dreaming of and reaching for the ideal. It is about the realization of genuine emotion, and the exploration that follows. These are timeless and transforming themes, which explains, perhaps, the project’s popularity among young and old throughout the world.

Regardless of the level of your attachment to the 80s, Timecop1983’s music is still noteworthy. Its singular identity, meticulous craftsmanship, and wistful energy combine to provide a listening experience that satisfies through its rhythms and lifts through its complex but powerful emotions. Add the retro layer, however, and Running in the Dark, along with the rest of the project’s discography, moves into another space entirely. This is music created with deep respect for a particular era in history, and while it certainly succeeds at engaging multiple eras at once, Leenaerts is careful to keep the blood of the Eighties pulsing and vital. Somewhere, John Hughes is surely smiling.

Atrium Carceri, Cities Last Broadcast, God Body Disconnect – Miles to Midnight

Cryo Chamber, 2018

Collaborations are nothing new for the prolific Cryo Chamber label, but Miles to Midnight is notably different. Atrium Carceri and Cities Last Broadcast return, fresh from last year’s Black Corner Den, and are joined by God Body Disconnect for what is described as a “foggy noir” album. There’s a skeletal conceptual narrative on Cryo Chamber’s bandcamp page for the album – a downtrodden detective and a hotel harboring secrets – but it wisely leaves the details to the listener. It’s an immediately intriguing angle on the dark ambient formula, especially given the contributors, but Miles to Midnight is not what one might expect.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the album is how natural it sounds; a remarkable feat, given its minimalist structure. Immediately apparent is its attention to tempo, set by light snare drums that give the music shape. The title track sets the tone perfectly, as the shuffling percussion is draped in a wispy veil of toned and dusty ambiance. “A Thousand Empty Rooms” is graced by a delicate piano loop that, when mixed with the drum’s lazy tempo and sparse atmosphere, creates a surprisingly relaxing atmosphere, guiding us through drifting dust motes and dusky light trickling through yellowed windowpanes. Its sparse elements belie the thick mood, and it startles with its unified vision.

The tension tightens ever so slightly on “Scene of the Crime,” but this is the only place where Miles to Midnight ventures into familiar dark ambient territory. It’s understandable, given the title, but this is the exception. “Floor 6, Please” returns to the established template; it’s largely sly bass tones and piano backed by strolling distant drums, with clever atmosphere emerging and fading like buildings glimpsed through dense fog. Given its powerful feel, it’s too bad the track’s just three minutes long. Crowd samples abound on “The Other Lobby,” and it’s here that the album becomes its most spectral, drawing clearly from The Humming Tapes, the static-drowned, electro-seance album from Cities Last Broadcast. Even here, the tendencies aren’t as bleak, eventually morphing seamlessly to meditative rather than haunting via calming synths, though the spirits do linger nearby.

Miles to Midnight becomes increasingly alien as it progresses. “The Sleep Ensemble” is a strange collage of looped tones, bizarre samples, and distant scuttling, but like the album as a whole, it’s draped in a sepia warmth, muting any foreboding elements and replacing threat with mystery. Plucked guitar headlines the dreamlike and hypnotically rendered “Quiet Days on Earth”, merged organically with reverential keyboards and nudged along by subterranean bass chords and fragile snares.

Miles to Midnight challenges and guides the listener, revealing its hidden secrets one track at a time, as we wander its dim halls and explore its forgotten corners. Repeated listens reveal its clever sound design and arrangement, and new details present themselves as elusive fragments of the overarching enigma. Miles to Midnight is an ambient journey that is neither ominous nor foreboding, but unusually and irresistibly inviting.

Chungking Mansions and Internet Goddess Shinatama – The moonlit chatlogs of a c0mrade

Ailanthus Recordings (AR 108), 2015

“We’re in!”

So declares the enthusiastic and somewhat surprised voice of a nameless young man, sampled in “Unauthorized Backdoor Access,” the opening track of The moonlit chatlogs of a c0mrade. It’s a fitting introduction to what follows: a trip through the mysterious non-world of the internet with the crowded streets of Asia as background, guided by vaporwave heavies Chungking Mansions and Internet Goddess Shinatama. It’s a pulsing, moody, and diverse album, meshing Hong Kong ambience with a variety of modern electronic techniques, while providing fragments of narrative in classic vaporwave style.

Much of the phantom story is hinted at in the track titles: “Ode to Titania,” “Visions of Chung Wan,” “Valuan Nights,” “First Course Sushi Platter for 4.” It’s fleshed out, albeit in skeletal fashion, by liner notes on the Ailanthus Recordings Bandcamp website:

In the darkest deepest chatrooms two shadowy forms communicate in pulses of energy at the speed of light. The two ghosts (a Haughty Goddess of Data and the Spirit of a Drunken Tourism Tycoon) were quarantined in Avast! and subject to a thorough investigation. I, one of these Anonymous Investigators, will now leak these findings to the world at large. The world must know of these Haunted Chatrooms.

Of course, it’s easy to tell who the two personas are: Chungking Mansions and Shinatama. The Investigator is presumed to be the hacker whose voice begins the album. What happens next is really up to the listener; c0mrade is collaborative ambience at its best.

Fortunately, the album is more than mere concept. The styles of the two personas seem made for each other; Chungking Mansion’s sly Far East urban panache is enhanced cleverly by Shinatama’s murky atmospheres and IDM-inspired rhythms. “Oxygenated Baijiu,” with its synthwave-and-downpitched-vocal foundation, is a prime example of this, with the lazy hazy broken-transmission trappings of “Dynasty” not far behind. “Do You Want To See The Ruins My Friend” is deliciously tense, and the looped sing-song vocals and icy aura of “Ode to Titania” is steeped in mystique. In spite of its diverse palette, c0mrade flows as the best soundtracks do, shaping action and forwarding plot, even when said plot is elusive at best.

Compulsively enjoyable and technically proficient, c0mrade gradually increases its hypnotic grasp as it progresses. Its identity, while sparse on detail, is thickly delivered. It appears this was a one-off collaboration, but when it’s pulled off to such a level as it is here, there’s plenty of depth in which to lose oneself. Chungking Mansions and Internet Goddess Shinatama have already proven themselves on an individual scale, but together, they tap into a rarefied realm. Music is still the best medium to provide a profound blurring between the real and the virtual, and albums such as The moonlit chatlogs of a c0mrade are proof.

Distant Pulses – An Interview with Opollo

Jarek Leskiewicz understands the inner workings of ambient music. As Opollo, he weaves shoegaze guitar drones with electronic atmospheres, inspired by the beauty and mystery of the far reaches of deep space. Of A Distorted Star, the project’s newest release, shows distinct technical and aesthetic progression. Recently, teutonkhamat was given the opportunity to dive into Leskiewicz’ brain first-hand, to find out what makes Opollo tick, as well as gain some insight into this fascinating project’s origins.

[teutonkhamat]: Thank you for your time, Jarek. Let’s start with the origins of Opollo. What are your influences, in terms of style and concept?

 [Jarek Leskiewicz]: What drives me the most is the emotional mood of the moment and urge to explore the sound world without limiting myself to the rules of typical song-writing. I’ve always seen the Opollo setting as some kind of mad scientist laboratory or a malfunctioning spaceship drifting into the unknown. The influences go way back to my childhood.
As a little kid, I was exposed to Tangerine Dream’s Stratosfear and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon through my mom. I remember being scared by Floyd’s masterpiece and Stratosfear, while not very ambient, was quite a trance experience for me. I think I was programmed by both early on. On the other hand, my grandmother was working in most of the movie theatres in my hometown Opole, which basically became my kindergarten. It awakened my passion for movies and their soundtracks. The track that really planted my ambient yearning was Brian Eno’s “Prophecy Theme,” from David Lynch’s film Dune. It’s still one of my favourite ambient songs, and its influence is all over my music. It has that mysterious siren’s call quality and deep emotion about it.
I was very into science fiction (books, movies and even Polish fandom) so the classic Blade Runner score by Vangelis obviously had a shrine in my early teen room. Add to that the more intimate parts of Mark Isham’s soundtrack to The Hitcher, the absolutely precursory Solaris score by Eduard Artemiev, and the innovative sound design and audio effects of the Star Wars films and you will get the scope of my initial background. Maybe too obvious but very cinematic for sure.
Later on, I was heavy into alternative music. My adventure with shoegaze started with my love for 4AD (mostly Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil) and more industrial-rocking Curve, which I actually got into before discovering the pioneering sound of My Bloody Valentine, which influenced Curve in the first place! Medicine’s debut got me into crazy distortion, which developed my curiosity for the type of noise produced by Merzbow. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other influences to my musical being.

That is a diverse beginning! How would you describe the evolution of Opollo and its sound? 

Opollo was born around 2009. As I was involved in some more “hard rocking” musical projects at the time, it started as my outlet for minimal, ethereal, contemplative music – something I worked on when I wanted to relax from focused, in your face productions and straightforward, defined sounds. It started as two-piece but we’ve never made a whole record together, although we played a cool live set at an ambient festival. The demos we wrote during that time have set the musical course of the project. I also decided on the NASA lab type visuals at that stage. The whole thing was obviously strongly inspired by Brian Eno’s groundbreaking record Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks. I also remember being intrigued by a photograph by my friend John Eder that depicted two skeletons in spacesuits standing at the platform of an empty underground station.

Opollo aims for a specific type of sound and concept. Are you involved with other projects that may have influenced your sound?

There were earlier projects of mine that influenced Opollo. One was Koloid, where I experimented with minimal drones and outlandish sounds, and the other one was Fault, where I played around heavy beats and developed wall-of-sound dense shoegaze-like guitar layers. That project was definitely more euphoric. Half-consciously I combined those two into the Opollo sound. Later on, I think Opollo had influenced some of my different projects, not the other way around. I started to include more ambient layers and drones in the structure of normal songs. Some Opollo ideas were also foundations for SPC ECO (“Pearls” or “Get Lost” for instance) and Zenith Myth (“Temple Dome”) tracks . One element that jumped back to Opollo was a voice. I don’t think I used any vocals on Rover Tracks but you can hear it on Stone Tapes and even more on Of A Distorted Star. It’s always used just as one of the layers though. You may hear some more similar stuff slipping into Opollo in the future. Heavy riffs, more vocals, or even live drums. It’s like that during live performances. I try to make it diverse and interesting for the audience…and myself.

Of a Distorted Star sees you returning to Bandcamp after working with a label. What factors influenced your decision?

I assembled Of A Distorted Star while working on a different Opollo record. It came more as a byproduct of it. I knew those tracks paint a slightly different picture. More intimate strokes and brushes. More emotional. Inner instead of outer space. I didn’t really want to get bogged down with looking for a label, negotiating contracts and a far release date. Creating a complete artwork takes a lot of time too. I just wanted to put it out for people to hear. To get it out of my system. I needed that.

What are some differences between self-promotion and working with a label?

I would describe self-promoting as quite hard. It’s always great to have a label to back you up with sending out promo copies to magazines and blogs. Having a hard copy of the record still helps a lot too. I wasn’t active in that aspect before digital platforms era so can’t really comment on that. I think it’s easier now for a striving artist who can have a web page as good as well-known acts, connecting directly with the audience. At the same time, there’s so much music out there that one feels like a drop in the ocean. For me Bandcamp is the best digital platform out there. Soundcloud is also cool but I usually prefer the visual presentation of Bandcamp. Each individual page looks more like a record to me. With the simple but great design tools, it’s easy to create a unique identity. 

It can be difficult to make a musical project stand out when digital releasing has become easier. Do you find that performing live is still important in the modern scene?

When it comes to live performances, yes, I think those are still the best ways of exposure and solidifying your name. To make the audience believe the artist/band is “real” and capable of performing the music. Having said that I play live sporadically. It’s always fun and quite an adventure but I’m mostly a studio hermit – that is my natural creative habitat. 

What people have helped the development of Opollo?

I think Martin Anderson of Dopedrone and Yeti Island is my best musical buddy. He always lends a helping hand and valuable perspective. I try to return the favour. He’s very talented and I really enjoy working with him on different projects. Another friend that helped a bit with Opollo is Filippo Gaetani, a producer and musician out of Tuscany. While he’s not really known for the kind of music that Opollo deals with, he’s an energetic and very competent musician. We often chat about movies too.
Marcin Lojek is a really cool designer and a fellow musician who helped with the Stone Tapes record. Marcin was always very supportive of my music. He’s also involved with excellent XAOC devices. He and the guys at Zoharum Records released Stone Tapes together.
I would also like to mention Przemek Kaminski, the man behind the Festiwal Ambientalny. He has such great taste for ambient, drone, and experimental music and each year brings top-notch acts to perform on the festival stages. Przemek has already invited Opollo twice, in 2009 and 2016, to take part in that amazing event, and both times it was a blast. The whole crew was very friendly, respectful of the artists and ultra helpful. Last year Opollo had the pleasure of sharing the stage with The Sight Below, Christoph Berg and Piotr Cisak & Freeze. Backstage I bumped into Juliana Barwick and Alex Leonard of Ebauche. All great, inspiring people.

When did it occur to you that music was more than a small hobby for you? 

As a teen, I was quite a passionate listener. I would lay down in my room for many hours or even days listening to the records. It wasn’t just background fun. My main focus was on the music played. It took me places. It was very escapist.
It was my religion and my homeworld. The courage to try and play or make the music myself was missing though. No skills in that regard. No one from my family was a musician. I was just a believer for many years.

What were your earliest experiments with music like?

It started (as it often does in the old days) with a bunch of close friends and a basement. Only one of us had an instrument. We banged on toy drums and cheesy Korean keyboards. One day I bought a very cheap, old, messed up guitar and a friend borrowed me his set of budget stompboxes. It went from there, but as I was always pretty allergic to learning things the usual way, it took me a long time to find my path. In my early twenties, I bought a computer station with an additional combination of music software and hardware, which was a milestone. I finally had the tools to express myself the way I needed to. It was never just a hobby. It was my vital fuel. My prescription drug. Maybe a bit of a curse too!

Please describe your current creative process.

For Opollo, the improvisational factor is very high. I get the best results this way, and also at the end of the day the music still has some mystery for myself. There’s usually some pre-production, though, where I collect sounds, drones, and ambiance, and later decide which ones inspire me to build upon and play around. This second phase is the most fun and the most creative. It’s where the magic happens. After that there are countless hours of tedious editing and rearranging, adding layers and early mastering, and dealing with self-doubt.

Where would you like Opollo to be in the next five years?

Five years? Hmmm… I don’t think that far with my projects. Probably to avoid some kind of creative anxiety caused by pressure. I usually know what I want to work on during the next few months or even a year, but there also come unexpected collaborations and propositions that influence the inventing process. You can’t predict what will inspire you or interest you in the future, or what surprises in life are waiting around the corner. I have a lot of unreleased material from the last two years, such as outtakes from the Of A Distorted Star sessions, as well as tracks made for live performances. I think there’s another LP or two EPs waiting to be finished and released. It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it!

Thank you for your insights. It’s been a pleasure! I look forward to the next step in the evolution of Opollo.

Thank you for having me!

Opollo discography:

Rover Tracks (Bandcamp, 2012)
Stone Tapes (New Nihilism, 2015)
Of a Distorted Star (Bandcamp, 2017)

Very special thanks to Jarek Leskiewicz.

https://opollo.bandcamp.com/

Opollo – Of a Distorted Star

bandcamp, 2017

Ambient music is no stranger to space. There have been so many albums examining the cosmic void that it would seem each visible star has its own unique soundtrack. As the universe can be interpreted in multiple ways, there are albums ranging from yawning nameless terror to wide-eyed saccharine wonder, and everything in between.

Opollo has broken the hold of Earth’s gravity before. It’s been two years since Jarek Leskiewicz launched his vessel beyond gravity’s reach, but while his two previous albums, Rover Tracks (2012) and Stone Tapes (2015), focused on our own planet’s lunar phenomena, Of a Distorted Star is destined for uncharted realms beyond our solar system. It’s a fitting shift in theme, for this is a refined and expanded Opollo, poised to navigate the corners of the starry deep with a newfound sense of assurance.

Opollo’s sound revolves around treated guitar drones, vast swaths of sonic layers that move and shift through gradual chord patterns. His earlier work as Opollo hinted at an epic scope, but shorter track times and experimentation seemed to impose limits on the music’s immersive quality. Of a Distorted Star addresses this with a flourish, as seven of the ten tracks are over five minutes in length. In addition, Leskiewicz’s guitars are more balanced with the music’s synthetic elements, resulting in a cohesive listen that retains its singular identity from start to finish.

There’s still variety here, but it’s carefully focused. The gentle twinkling sequence of “Magnitude” slowly expands into slow fuzzed-out guitar chords, but with keyboards equally prevalent in the mix. Slow-burn growth is nothing new for ambient, but Leskiewicz handles progression with confidence. “To Evaporate” is an even stronger example of this technique, with stirring chords that unfold gloriously against the uncertain light of swollen suns. “Recluse” and “The Man Who Couldn’t Breathe” are heavily cinematic, recalling Moby’s majestic track “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” and soundtrack work such as Marc Streitenfeld’s grand theme from Ridley Scott’s film Prometheus. Leskiewicz has followed this sound before, but never with such confidence, or so effectively.

Of a Distorted Star isn’t just guitar run through filters and effects. There are synthetic elements everywhere, from static-buried voices and keyboard beds to scattered samples and sequenced bursts, but these details never make the music too artificial. “Rapid Rotators,” my favorite moment of the album, and perhaps my favorite Opollo track, is almost completely guitar-free, evoking the awe and peace of orbiting a drifting celestial body while a variety of mechanisms buzz and fiddle in the background. This track seems the epitome of Opollo’s new direction, with its influences found throughout the album. Leskiewicz is no longer satisfied with just laying down overlapping drones, but has pushed his own boundaries with carefully planned and executed experimentation. The album’s closer, “Keep Shining the Dark Light,” is similarly dominated by electronics, and at over seven and a half minutes, is the longest track on the album. Its masterful blend of guitar, keyboard, and silence hints, perhaps, at the next stage of Opollo’s evolution; I do not think its title is accidental.

As signified by its closing track, Of a Distorted Star has captured a rare and delicate balance between what haunts and what illuminates. Opollo has always been too graceful to be termed strictly dark ambient, but its sound is also, thankfully, free from the overly earnest and flighty brightness that marks so many similarly themed ambient albums. Of a Distorted Star understands the mystery of the cosmos, in all its wonder and terror, and is a deeply moving soundtrack to a transforming journey into the unknown.