Each track is intelligently arranged and flow seamlessly throughout this very thoughtful and engaging album. The overall ambience is hauntingly beautiful and the melodies shine like distant stars on a crystal clear night.
Distantly beautiful
I first heard the n5MD label many years ago on Digital::Nimbus Radio, and since the beginning, I’ve been blown away by the quality of their releases. There’s a real architecture about the label and everything they put out has this aesthetic too. Threads is an album of broken up, glitched and crunchy electronics set against epic ambient post rock style backgrounds and washes that are very cinematic and beautiful. There’s also some genuinely stunning IDM elements to the album.
Jason van Wyk is a very talented musician and producer and the sound on this album is truly delightful. You often find that one talent outweighs the other as the artist puts more effort into the part which they feel they work best with. It’s obvious here that Jason is as comfortable with his instruments as he is with the production side of things.
Each track is intelligently arranged and flow seamlessly throughout this very thoughtful and engaging album. The overall ambience is hauntingly beautiful and the melodies shine like distant stars on a crystal clear night. There’s a distant beauty about Threads. I can’t really explain in words exactly what I’m trying to impress by distant beauty, but that’s how it feels. Distantly beautiful. From a cold technical perspective, I could put that down to the expert use of reverb on the album, but my heart tells me it’s the music. It’s a truly terrific album from start to finish that’s packed with genuinely emotional passages. Some of which, most even, are jaw-droppingly epic and to use the word again, beautiful. I’m worried I’ve used it too much, but it is simply that. Beautiful.
One of my favorite releases of the year so far.
Threads is available on n5MD July 23, 2021. [Website | Bandcamp]
