Mirage brings the best of both worlds together, as live instrumentation from an array of guest musicians meets skillful sound design. Always evolving and sharpening his craft, Ben Lukas Boysen leaves listeners in awe, and curious of what he could come up with next.
A looser, more organic touch
With an extensive back catalog of releases and film scores under his belt, German producer and composer Ben Lukas Boysen (aka Hecq) returns with Mirage, his latest album for Erased Tapes. As Hecq, Boysen crafts high-precision electronics in the vein of post-industrial and IDM—whereas under his own name the music seems to have a looser, more organic touch to it.
Mirage brings the best of both worlds together, as live instrumentation from an array of guest musicians meets skillful sound design. “Empyrean,” the opening track commences with the morphed vocals of Lisa Morgenstern, then builds up with clicky percussion and dense synthesizer tracks, filling out the frequency spectrum quite nicely. The following track “Kenotaph” features drifting piano phrases and is complimented with the dynamic live drums of Achim Färber. On “Medela,” Boysen blurs the line between human and machine, fusing the cello recordings of Anne Müller, and saxophone elements of Daniel Thorne with artificial components, combining to form a type of audio mirage, as the title so appropriately states.
The entire album has a cinematic vibe going on and the final track “Love” is no exception. With colliding acoustic and synthesized elements, the song builds up a massive crescendo in which one can feel the serotonin swelling inside the brain. What is quite evident with this release, is that Ben Lukas Boysen is always evolving and sharpening his craft, leaving listeners in awe, and curious of what he could come up with next.
Grab Mirage on CD or vinyl format—which also comes in a limited clear color variant.
Mirage is available on Erased Tapes.
