Collecting tranquil interludes gone astray, broken childhood samples, psychedelic undertones and kaleidoscopic colors colliding in blissful accord.
As much as I try to hold back any reference to Edinburgh’s Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin‘s musical space as the genre-defining nostalgic downtempo duo, crafting a sound that they’ve firmly etched into the hearts of millions (I’d like to think), Faex Optim (aka Wesley MacDonald also from Edinburgh, Scotland) rests somewhere in the cross-hairs. Acknowledging the wondrous beauty of times gone by, faded memories sparked by sound, emotional sonic tapestries that are brittle to the touch, Faex Optim occupies that familiar foggy place and doesn’t hide from it.
Collecting tranquil interludes gone astray, broken childhood samples, psychedelic undertones and kaleidoscopic colors colliding in blissful accord, this is where Faex Optim resides. A place where corroded percussion, fragmented melodies and disjointed harmonies swirl in cohesive unity. As submerged guitars ebb and flow on a laid back picnic in an unfamiliar park, Start With The River transports the listener gracefully. So just as the Boards’ have reached critical acclaim in their 20-yr trajectory, Faex Optim does in a brief few years. There’s simply no hiding the fact that this 9-pack maneuvers through recognizable dusty krautrock-electronics and reveals, along the way, that it’s just fine to emulate as long as the result is transportive. Faex Optim succeeds in this respect.
Start With The River is available on Kahvi.
