(May 2010) Many years ago I had a dream that I entered a small, nondescript room. The room slowly shifted in color and texture and began to eerily transform into an old elevator. As the transformation neared completion, the walls covered in rust and grime, The elevator started to descend, and I felt an excitement over what would happen next. The excitement, however, quickly became uneasy anticipation. That uneasiness grew to fear. I began to realize that when the door opened, I would be somewhere completely unfamiliar, unpleasant and unwelcoming. Before the door opened, I awoke in fear unsure of where I was to stop or what would be revealed. The fright and insecurity stayed with me long after the dream had gone.
Recently, on an evening walk home, I was reminded of that feeling, that uneasy anticipation leading to fear. The soundtrack for my walk was the latest release from Phoenecia, Echelon Mall. My journey started friendly enough, having witnessed a mind blowing performance from pianist Hauschka at my favorite Seattle venue, The Triple Door. My spirits were high and my mind full of inspiration-fueled thoughts. By the time I reached my apartment, however, the music of Echelon Mall had consumed me, my thoughts darkened, and I felt very vulnerable and suspect of the world around me. I realized I was actually frightened, and at that moment, I recalled the dream.
In 1996, while working at KUCI, Irvine CA, I was introduced to the music of Phoenecia’s Joshua Kay and Romulo Del Castillo. Like so many people around me, I fell in love with their Soul Oddity project. It was cute music overflowing with blippy, acidic, tweeked-out electro funk. Quickly it became a gateway for me, leading to the first four 12″s on their label Schematic (three of the releases from their solo projects – Metic, Takeshi Muto, and Jewsa, as well as a 12″ from Push Button Objects).
The solo projects offered an alternate perspective to the duo’s production style. The electro foundation was still present, along with some of the cuteness (Jeswa’s “Sed” could be a clumsy, but well intentioned, hero’s theme song), but these were occasionally more abrasive and very experimental (especially the metallic, syrupy, strangely reverberating Metic.)
Their collaborative project as Phoenecia, first released as a four track EP on Warp in 1997, shed most of the quirky aesthetic that was present in Soul Oddity, revealing stuttering, quick, electro rhythms and more serious, heady moods. It was a sound that drifted between Autechre and (their hometown sound) Miami Bass, and still seems to be the sound people think of with with regards the label Schematic or any of their projects.
By the time Phoenecia released a full-length album (Schematic, 2001), the collaborative sound had morphed even more, combining the attention to rhythm with layers of droney, dubbed-out, abstract murkiness. It seemed as if the music had moved from the clubs to the swamp, and the album was appropriately called Brownout. I recall the album reminding me of Not Breathing, which struck me as a curious – a pleasant meeting of two very different projects.
Though the duo kept busy running Schematic, remixing and occasionally contributing to compilations, their musical output seemed to slow after 2001. Until very recently Brownout remained Phoenecia’s only full-length release.
9 years later, Phoenecia has released another album. Echelon Mall is a collection of works originally created for films and exhibitions between 2004-2008, further reworked for the release. The duo describes it as “Cinema for the ears.” Certainly it is a deeper, dirtier excursion into the swamp, having more in common with the disassociating tones of Coil’s Time Machines and Nurse with Wound’s otherworldly soundscapes than with electro. Echelon Mall is more DXM than it is IDM or DMX. It could be the inverse of Brownout, where the texture and distant, echoing din are presented up-close, suffocating and blurring the percussion, rhythm and melody, only allowing them to occasionally struggle to the surface.
From the start, the album dismisses any chance of a light, casual listen with a mesh of engulfing and dissonant sounds — natural, mechanical and somewhere in between. As a counter to the abundance of sound, Echelon Mall at times reduces itself to spaciousness, where panning clatter bounces in and out, and in which several species of small furry animals occasionally scratch, paw, peck and sniff, often maliciously, from just behind the speakers.
Though much of the album is eerie, there are strangely sobering moments of beauty and clarity. Six minutes through the epic “Some Other,” an awesome twenty minute aural vacation to “some other” place, a beautiful chime like sound floats to the surface, flooding the gray soundscape with color for just a moment before sliding back into a sonic k-hole. Immediately following “Some Other,” “Phobia-Philia” unfolds in a series of overlapping tones, reverberating and feeding-back, pushing through time and space as could-be slices of human generated radio broadcasts slip in and out of perception. Much later, the close of the album grounds the listening experience with the sound of wind blowing through a calm, evening forest, almost humorously infringed upon by the chatter of almost-of-this-world insects, frogs, birds and other such critters.
Back in 1996, the duo released a song as Soul Oddity that started as a groovy, blippy electro track but eventually slid into a drone. The drone was quickly interrupted with a voice announcing: “Hey spaceman, welcome back to planet Earth” — and then, as expected, kicked back into the happy, groovy song for a bit longer. While Echelon Mall is a very solid release, I sincerely hope that the years of quiet from Phoenecia were brighter than the music contained on Echelon Mall, and that much like the Soul Oddity song, they abruptly recovered with a happy and welcoming return to Earth. I look forward to hearing what comes next.
Echelon Mall is out now on Schematic Music Co.
