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This collection, in addition to being a digital-only release, is intended to give the listener a feel for the Aleph Zero roster–a track list meant to both introduce us to these artists as well as tide us over until their next full release. It’s not so much a greatest hits record as a very chilled current rotation mix.
Shulman’s “The Unexpected Visitor (CBL Carbonator remix)” is a bit thicker than his regular work (probably due to that “CBL Carbonator remix” part of the track), though the ethereal flute still manages to weave its way through the track. Shulman’s second track, “NN3,” subtly swirls together gaseous electronics and choral swells into a downtempo mood piece that would easily accompany a celestial travelogue. Evan Bluetech’s “Oleander (Phuture Primitive remix)” swirls with amorphous echoes and gently undulating melodies, a languorous instrumental that flows on, Ganges-like, forever; while the undercurrent of “Misaki” is a delicate chatter of glitch and warped sine waves, beneath a sky of beautiful tones darting and prancing about. Omnimotion, more prone to using voices as part of their aural texture than the other artists, explores a pastorale paradise with “Uncontrolled.”
Newcomers Anahata, Agalactica, and Vataff Project don’t stray too far from the vibe laid down by the old hands. Anahata’s “Moments” blends electronically tweaked guitar, drifting strings, and a churning river of synthetics. Vataff Project’s “The Eternal Flute” transforms the “flute” into electronic birdsong; while Agalactica brings up the tempo a bit on the chilled vibe with “Aloe Vera,” as graceful and airy flute melodies are transported on a percolating bed of aquatic percussion. [Purchase]
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Omnimotion is fascinated with vocal sounds. His second record, Dream Wide Awake, is suffused with the sound of the human voice. In the dreamy trip-hop land of aural ambience created with these thirteen tracks, human language is still in its infancy; we are adrift on a protean sea of pre-linguistic expression.
The opener, “Nothingness,” carries the listener on a gentle swell while fluid melodies undulate beneath the placid surface. Flute and voice whisper a lullaby in our ears as we drift out to sea. The voice of a wood nymph haunts “Being;” while delicate percussion and fragile strings cavort in a sunlit glade, this woodland spirit reclines in the shade of a tall tree and watches the clouds move across a cerulean sky. “Un Autre Vie” wanders dreamlike through the alleys of Paris; we chase the faint melody of an accordion and the delicious laughter of a seductive Parisian girl. “Dubber” rolls back and forth with dub echo patterns like a teacup rolling about on coastal waves; while “Electronic Love” gurgles with the sonic effervescence of dawn stirring sleeping wind currents.
Some of the songs–“Days of Silence,” “Wide Awake,” “Japan,” “Purple Sky,” and “Ton Image”–have intelligible lyrics (hip-hop spoken word for “Purple Sky” even), and these songs are like islands in the protean sea. Tiny little outcroppings of rock and sand that rise up from the formless sonic landscapes, and we lash our tiny boats to their islands so that we can hear the prophetic serenade of the trip-hop oracle. [Purchase]
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A soundtrack for the end of the day, Midnight Soul Dive is a record that eschews some of the lighter trance elements that percolate through Aleph-Zero releases. This collection takes the listener on a journey into the nocturnal realms of self-reflection and dreamy introspection, and the songs are a little slower, a little darker, and filled with the ghosts of memory and desire. We are beneath the substrate of consciousness with this one, sinking beneath the layers of the id and ego, down into the murkier depths of the subconscious.
While Cord’s “Zodiac” glistens and chimes with light bell tones, the underlying motion of the track is powered by the sub-sonic rumble of the bass. Children’s voices chatter across the speakers, but they’re just ghosts of old playground antics–memories of our lost childhood. Krill.Minima’s “Wie Die Wolken Zieht Auch Der Tag Vorbei” is haunted by the persistent crackle of old vinyl, as if the somnambulant melody they offer is just a mercurial memory loop that has been summoned out of the faded grooves of our histories. The vinyl is being eaten by the act of listening; once played, this song won’t be heard again.
Anahata’s “Prana” unfolds like a lotus blossom, layers gradually rising out of ephemeral formlessness. A guitar sound echoes across temporal dimensions, resonances returning through the rattle of the percussion and the quivering decay of old strings. The wandering operatic ghost of Omnimotion’s stellar “Embrace” is pursued by an aged ghost hunter in an old cart with squeaky wheels and grumbling machinery. The polyrhythmic patter of raindrops and the undulating melody of the wind through reed instruments lend atmosphere to a piece that becomes caught between memory and melancholy. Ishq and Shulman collaborate on “Mother Nature,” an ambient sonata filled with hints of celestial light. Each beam is exploded into tones that stretch all the way across your aural field. Each pulse is transmuted into a sonic swell that threatens to burst infinity, and yes, somewhere in there, angels are singing.
The birdsong of Vataff Project’s “Plasticine Bird” is a piece of long tone poetry, as if our memory of these bright birds has become stretched and distorted. There’s still hints of real-time bird song, but they’re hints of a reality that is separated from us. We’re behind a smear of light, a time dilation wipe, and everything is unfolding in waveforms longer than our arms. Elve offers birdsong as well, though the effect in “Cyantium Flower” is more hypnotic, more of an suggestion of a dream landscape into which we are slowed drawn into. Bluetech’s “Snow Drift” crowds the end of “Cyantium Flower,” stealing some of its birdsong before it makes everything crystalline, trapping the delicate avian melodies in crystal lattices that resonate with endless glassine tones. [Purchase]
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Shulman’s fourth record is a fertile mélange of world styles that strives to be both a very idiosyncratic record as well as a commixture of global humanity. Endless Rhythms of the Beatless Heart, a very oxymoronic title that manages to encapsulate the intent behind the record, wants to bridge the gap of linguistic differences; it wants to be universal in its expression, in its ability to communicate with everyone. How successful is it? That’s hard to say, but the audacity of its effort is remarkable.
Shulman crosses so many styles and utilizes such a wide variety of instrumentation and technique with every track that, in isolation, each is a schizophrenic amalgamation of aural possibilities. Melodies drift across styles, instruments are transformed into digital echoes of themselves, and tones shift their mood with rapid alacrity. As a whole experience, Endless Rhythms of the Beatless Heart is a whirlwind travelogue, an hour spent globe-hopping, absorbing regional affectations and applying them to the calliope of music that has gone prior. “Retroscape,” the eleven minute opener, begins as a folksy duet between violin and computer-tweaked vocalizing that has been cleaned up for a downtempo club, but then the violinist drops a tab of acid and starts cavorting into the electronic stratosphere, winding up into a haze of digital glitch. A psychoanalyst phones in her assessment of our mood, her long distance call setting the stage for a trance-international break that hiccups back into the downtempo mood from the beginning (sans violin and voice now).
“One Step Closer” hums with the rhythmic sense of motion that lies beneath the weightlessness of the high-speed trains in Europe and Japan, that sensation of near instantaneous travel while standing still, a jazzy half-remembered melody tickling the back of your consciousness. You could, listening to the waterfall of synthesized strings and the soap bubble melody, fall asleep for a little while. Just a quick and refreshing nap while the train gently rocks back and forth. “After Silence” is a collaboration between the glitch drone of Squaremeter and a harpist from an European symphony. It’s a give and take duet that dances lightly across a framework of minimal techno and ambient glitch. By the time the song evolves enough to have a heartbeat and a voicebox, it’s become a glittering cascade of tones.
“Invention,” coming hard on the heels of “After Silence” is a whiplash move as Shulman makes a hard turn into neo-kitsch urban jazz (think Candy Dulfer meets Jan Hammer, both on a the small club comeback tour). If it were incidental music in a Michael Mann film, offered without a self-aware wink at the audience, it would work. It would be retro in that “what is old is new again but in digital!” sort of way, and we’d come away with a fond memory of having heard music, but not remembering the details of what it was, but, gosh!, didn’t it fit the scene just perfectly? But on this record? It’s a detour that leaves the listener somewhat befuddled as to why this route was taken.
“Eternal Bliss of the Grateful Souls” is an extended ambient outro that has, as its melodic line, the tone message from the Close Encounters of the Third Kind aliens. I think. That series of notes may just be part of the cultural zeitgeist now. This may be the true measure of Shulman’s success with Endless Rhythms of the Beatless Heart in that he’s synthesized the global experiences of the last thirty years into an endlessly evolving mix that ignores all borders. This is the soundtrack of the global citizen. [Purchase]
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