The voice of elusive Detroit techno legend Terrence Dixon appears on “Salvaged Copper,” an atmospheric parable that paints the morning sunrise after a long night of dancing in a warehouse. A vignette is set here; there is a world inside the memory of a scene, inside a gutted factory, and then there is a reality outside of those halcyon nights that casts a long shadow on the days that follow.
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TOUR DATES
JUL 21 SUN
Splendour In The Grass – Tycho
Yelgun, Australia
JUL 23 TUE
Forum Melbourne – Tycho
Melbourne, Australia
JUL 24 WED
Sydney Opera House – Tycho
Sydney, Australia
JUL 26 FRI
Fuji Rock Festival – Tycho
Yuzawa-Machi, Niigata-ken, Japan
SEP 19 THU
Resonance Music & Arts Festival | SEP 19-22 – Tycho
Slippery Rock, PA, United States
Today ALEK FIN unveils his 3rd solo EP titled “Originate”. The 5 track collection is by far his most intimate, vocal centered record yet.
“It’s a heady 5 track EP that I wrote after completing an 8 week mindfulness meditation course. I wanted to explore the concept of taking wild, scattered thoughts and slowly focusing it into a calm, repetitive state. I used a lot more live samples and instrumentation than I have in the past which resulted in recordings that are raw, full of quirks, and white noise. Felt great to just let things be as they are and not over process everything.”— He says.
For those of you out there looking to score a sample pack with loops and oneshots from the record, it comes free with the purchase of the EP on Bandcamp. Just make sure to send your email.
Originate marks his return to being a solo artist full time and will be the first of a series of EP’s he will be dropping through 2020.
Taken from ‘Gravity Pairs’ LP by Beacon out November 2, 2018
Order ‘Gravity Pairs’ LP at: The Ghostly Store
Directed By: Jacob Gossett & Danny Scales
Director of Photography: Jacob Gossett
Production Company: VOIID Studio
Editing & Color: VOIID Studio
Produced by: Beacon & VOIID Studio
Lyrics:
Be My Organ
Be my organ now, and play for me
Be my witness now, and set me free
Be the alter, I’m falling to my knees
In my wicked hour, bring me peace
Be my holy wine and let me drink
Be my wandering mind, teach me to think
Be the silent voice inside of me
In my wicked hour I hear you speak
No one owes you anything,
But their keeping tabs on you and don’t know where to begin.
No one owes you anything,
But I’m keeping tabs on you and don’t know where to begin.
Taken from ‘Veriditas’ LP by Helios out August 31, 2018.
On respective edges of America — Oregon and Maine — Keith Kenniff records quiet music at night. “When things are calmer,” he says. “My mind is less distracted when I know that everything is dark outside.” For over a decade, such has been the mode — nocturnal, unrushed, using the same mini-cassette recorder, “a lovely little imperfect way to treat sounds” — for one of the country’s most understated composers. Kenniff has housed dozens of ambient releases under the name Helios since 2004, alongside post-classical output as Goldmund, shoegaze pop with his wife Hollie as Mint Julep, and commissions for film and television. It is a reliably transportive body of work that’s earned Kenniff a cult following, and a genuine modesty that’s kept him on the fringes, right where he prefers, in the dark.
Kenniff mostly lets his music breathe free of explanation, open to interpretation. As listeners, we follow subtle suggestions — the fiery sky on the cover of 2012’s Moiety, the countryside daydream of 2015’s Yume — extracting meanings from imagery and inscriptions. Veriditas, the sixth Helios full-length, shares its name with twelfth-century philosopher Hildegard von Bingen’s notion of “the greening power of the divine,” the term derived from the union of two Latin words: green and truth. Bingen saw the abundance of the earth as vitality to be cultivated, interconnected with the body and spirit. Take the concept in concert with Veriditas’ vistas of sound, gazing beyond the tree-lined wonder on its artwork, and we undoubtedly recognize the album’s rooting. Kenniff elaborates, “While I’m not a very spiritual person as it relates to a religious belief, I do feel an overwhelming connection between the aesthetics I find pleasing in my experience of nature and my experience of writing music.”
Veriditas introduces unusual shapes and landscapes to the Helios catalog. Whereas past songs have followed traditional structures — discernable bell curves with beginnings, arcs, and ends — the focus here is texture and harmony. “I wanted to explore emotionality within something more static.” Synth-tones radiate and hum as vignettes, often crisp and cloudless, other times smeared to a queasy Boards of Canada-like unease. The latter burbles below the last moments of “Eventually” and looms over the opener “Seeming” like darkness inching across a forest. Tracks cease at will. “Seeming” fades just after a sliver of light cuts through the mossy pillars. “Latest Lost” mists for just one minute. “Row The Tide” for two, hovering like a helium balloon lost to the horizon. “Even Today” hangs above the snowcaps, suspended in an upper arboreal sequence, as shimmering surges of static trace the treetops below.
Moments on Veriditas pass quickly, but as a series of moments, they are fluid, almost regenerative. Disassembling the album by instruments is difficult. Unlike past Helios work, there is no percussion. The one straightforward use of guitar appears on the ambling “Upward Beside The Gale,” strummed solemnly as if over end credits, watching the greenery lapse to grey in the twilight. In the second half of “Dreams,” crystalline piano chords converse with washes of orchestral notes and deep drone, advancing towards temporal clarity, a lookout point, that once presented evaporates.
In a way, Veriditas parallels the path of the Helios project to date: patient, immense, and wondrous without ostentation. Kenniff continues to find a soothing and centering quality in his craft. Aligned with Hildegard von Bingen’s philosophy, Kenniff looks towards sound, like many do to nature, for momentary vigor, for elemental and nourishing prolificacy. Here, in pursuit of viriditas, with precise textures and harmonies, he humbly extends that verdant expression outward, wide and pliable.
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photo by Reuben Wu
