Mitchell bucks the trend, concentrating on the music he wants to create without pandering to the constraints of the floor and record store shelf.
Glasgow’s Paul Mitchell made a brave move just over a year ago. He decided to sideline his House endeavors, usually released under his Meschi alias, to focus on another electronic passion; Ambient music. Since the decision this young artist has established Elephant Recordings, a platform for like-minded electronic experimenters, with cassette outings from the likes of Ian Martin and Arne Weinberg (under his Valanx moniker.) Mitchell cut his Ambient teeth with Tabernacle Records in 2012, and it is to the Slabs boys that he now returns with Dichotomy Pt. 1.
“Light” opens and immediately turns back the clock. With a lot of modern Ambient outings it is to library sounds and circuit board cerebralism that artists turn. For the opener Mitchell looks to 90s. Burbling machine tones echo and recur, gentle dabs of analogue warmth ebbing and flowing against lilting chords. The sound is r reminiscent of some of Global Communications fledgling tracks or some of Rising High’s excellent Chill-Out or Die compilation entries. Soothing tides wash over the listener, a pervasive calming, a sonorous embrace. Chords are floated into the stratosphere for “White.” Melodies slide in and out of sight, bars melt into one another as notes run into evaporating horizons. The flip opens with “Dark.” As the title might suggest, the mood is decidedly murkier. Synthlines are stretched, truncated, elasticated, condensed and finally relegated to the void. A searching modular mindscape from Mitchell. To come full circle, “Black” closes. The colder undertones of “Dark” are again present, the track pulsating with a soundtrack motif, subtle bars being revisited to produce an intangible threat for this unsettling climax.
Ambient can often be the elephant in the room, no puns intended with Mr Mitchell’s label. It’s a sound that many artists would like to devote more time to, but the commercial side says no. Mitchell bucks the trend, concentrating on the music he wants to create without pandering to the constraints of the floor and record store shelf. Instead the London based artist takes up the mantle of first early electronic experimenters. Side A ruminates on the echoes those early Ambient alchemists who turned their make-shift studios into cocoons of warm analogue glow. Side B courses with the lifeblood of machine musicians who graced the silver screen with their synthscapes. Accomplished stuff from Paul and an excellent addition to the Tabernacle catalog.
Dichotomy Pt.1 is available on Tabernacle.
