Breakbeat electronica and speeding rhythms with ambient-psychedelic undertones, Ninetynine is romantic and sublime at the core.
A beam of light in a vast space of darkness, Ninetynine—from the native Grecian sound designer John Valasis (aka Poordream)—is a conscious musical denary and his third since 2009. Serious and progressive, this release is a meditation that escapes time. Breakbeat electronica and speeding rhythms with ambient-psychedelic undertones, Ninetynine is romantic and sublime at the core. Winds of past and future collide in IDM atmospheres, and you’ll be caught daydreaming while calculating your drive forward. Acoustic instruments, field recordings, voices and sounds of other places hover to remind us of this continuous march towards consistent synthesis of all human collective experience that refuse to surrender. Highly contrasted, this album has a gentle personality yet with a stubborn determination and frustration that takes refuge in a determined mind.
The mystical echoes and urban beats on “Urbanies” hold beauty in the process and so too does “Despair.” Succumbing to crickets and distant voices chanting or speaking—Ninetynine holds a darkness of today’s conscious mind with yesterday’s belief in absolute freedom. Beats and melodies play together in non-linear time-space with despair of a hero’s drive to take this mission. Progressively psychedelic “Bangla Razor” crawls with broken beats manifesting into glimpses of a secret known by all yet not spoken of. Simplicity, presence, amalgamations in tidal awareness, the title track has a calling and rekindles faith in an epic way. Capturing the drama, “Ninetynine” slowly enters us into a subdued space jungle where past, present and future don’t matter, what matters is that we’re flying. We’re here. And the only way is forward and upward despite the struggle; connecting all the dots. “Proof,” the most touching track of the lot, has a calling, it has a drive, it has love and rhythm.
The journey is long, and Ninetynine sacrifices as much as it gains. It’s a battle and sometimes a dance. We hear something very far away, if briefly audible and slowly enter a sort of celestial groove. Also featuring Zinovia with her Noiresque voice and a strategic remix for these paradoxical times.
Ninetynine is available on Tympanik Audio.
