Fractured harmonies and ambient particles coalesce into fragments as you’ll likely find yourself hypnotized by Surge of the Lucid‘s unconscious weaving of light and dark.
Dissolved (aka Paul Daniels) sculpts his latest body of work for Daddy Tank Recordings, a masterpiece of melodic electronics titled Surge of the Lucid. While name-dropping might be an easy way to attempt explaining what is revealed on this nine-track manifesto, it is important to note that echoes from the finest electronic music producers of the past two decades are threaded ever so carefully on this release. Artist such as Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Quinoline Yellow, Phoenecia and early artifacts from Skam, Toytronic, Neo Ouija and Morr Music are cleverly magnetized through Dissolved’s distinctive use of analog synths, modulars, and organic melody strands. Layers upon layers of glitch are presented as a logical progression from 2012’s dizzying dream-states of The Amber Surrealizations (Daddy Tank). Fractured harmonies and ambient particles coalesce into fragments as you’ll likely find yourself hypnotized by Surge of the Lucid‘s unconscious weaving of light and dark.
Without mentioning each individual entity, Dissolved deserves credit for articulating such vast expanses of contagious rhythmic shapes of sound. A plethora of percussion, carefully woven vocal highlights, mystical storylines, epic wanderings and a shift in space breeds a zone of electrical activity that merits repeated listening to fully comprehend. The evolution of each track begins to take shape after the dust settles.
Melodies merge and submerge themselves into ambient pockets of dust as they are reflected upon mirrors of crackling beats and vintage rhythm blasts. A literal serge of lucid bits and pieces, evaporated by the manipulation of hardware devices, knobs, cables and wooden boxes further reinforces the fact that Surge of the Lucid does not wear away. In fact, the album continues to evolve, devolve, emerge and submerge into and out of consciousness in a refined and subtle way.
Surge of the Lucid is a primed collection of abstract electrical slices of life that will easily find a place in 2013’s top lists. Highlights include “Stickleback Red,” “Your Age in Shark Years,” “On Board The Deuterium Arc” and “Selmentrasm.” Don’t miss out on this gem of a release by a very talented musician in the field of fine-tuned psychedelic-glitch electronics.
Surge of the Lucid is available on Daddy Tank. [Release page]
