Twilight is the work of one Jason Stevens, and is a record of the movement of tiny particles during the cold winters of the arid deserts of the Southwestern United States. It’s a record meant for headphones in the intimate darkness after the sun has gone out. Twilight begins as the light flees and the only sparks remaining are the fading luminescence of nocturnal insects and scavengers. Thirteen untitled tracks (and a remix by Displacer) explore micro-particle ambience and the delicate static of distant solar activity.
Self-described as a “glitchy, funktastic, atmospheric, schizoid-beat droppin’ voyage into the mind of a slightly melancholy, but mostly well balanced, young man,” Twilight draws its influence from five years of hawking CDs in a retail store where Stevens was exposed to more genres than is good for a young and impressionable mind. The Lapsed filter passes over these disparate sources and spits out an attention to rhythm and pacing, a penchant for atmosphere, and a delicate hand moving across the glitch underpinnings of the electronic landscape. As the tracks are untitled, the warp of Twilight comes off as a seamless journey, a single shot arced across a pinpricked heaven. This is a transmission of the night sky as recorded by a slow-moving radio telescope, the buzz and hiss of distant hot suns sparking and foaming in electrostatic fury.
“Untitled 2” bends with the desert sonority of a western guitar. Electronic measures lurch and stumble in accompaniment like saloon full of wooden-legged cowboys all staggering towards the bar in time with the wandering melody of the lonesome guitar. “Untitled 4” plays out its pattern of precise beats against a shimmering curtain of soft ambient tones — a meteor shower punctuating a glorious desert sunset. “Untitled 5” attaches you to a nano-creature of assembled electrons and sends you coursing through a colorful explosion of electro-magnetic particles, following the tiny sputtering creature as it navigates an endless labyrinth of tonal waves. “Untitled 9” shivers with the collision and fragmentation of tiny particles. A solemn bell tones rings and suffers from drop-outs in the background as tiny shards of microscopic noise get melted together on a hot stone before being swept off and shattered on the cold granite.
Nicolas Chevreux of Ad Noiseam continues to demonstrate that he has a great ear for discovering new work that isn’t bounded by the rigid toxicity of genre classifications. You can consistently count that an Ad Noiseam release will fascinate you in a manner completely unexpected, and the inclusion of Lapsed to the Ad Noiseam catalogue is pairing that elicits congratulatory nods to both artist and label. For those who like the beats, the glitches and the ambience, it’s all here for you in Twilight. Recommended.
Twilight is OUT NOW on Ad Noiseam (Germany).
