PCA adepts who’ve followed the project’s trajectory over the last decade may miss the signature purr and prod of bass propulsion and its dynamic; but they will find here new skin for the old ceremony, with fresh, or reformed, pleasures, wrapped/rapt as they are in diaphanous new configurations.
A sun-electricized psychedelic bliss-trip
Having followed up last year’s Entangled Routes (Ghost Box) with a live album, Social Dissonance (Sonic Cathedral), early this year, Pye Corner Audio has come up with Let’s Emerge!, a bold departure from his signature shadowy sound. It reflects a recent period that has evidently seen huge changes for Pye man, Martin Jenkins, offering ‘a collective (tentative) sigh of relief in reaction to this, nodding to new beginnings and a sense of hope.’
While Entangled Routes explored the underground fungal pathways via which plants communicate, Let’s Emerge! is more of an overground sun-seeking psychedelic affair—signaled even before a first note is sounded by Marc Jones’ ultra-chrome artwork, referencing Spacemen 3 and early Stereolab, whose repetition and drone elements are acknowledged early PCA influences. It’s a Jenkins trait to tailor his work to the individual labels he works with, and the fit with Sonic Cathedral is seamless here.
It’s a sun-electricized psychedelic bliss-trip from the psychoactive opening “De-Hibernate,” whereon a meld of shards and slivers of Andy Bell (Ride)’s ’gaze-haze with Jenkins’ plasmic synths brings new sonic dimensions; heard to heady effect on this tone-setting aperture of evanescent swathes and stratospheric vocal swirl, it’s carried through to the arc and tilt of “Lyrical,” feeding forward to a shimmering Enovian ritornello on “Haze Loops,” and “Saturation Point,” which resonates close to the post-Kosmische perimeters of Emeralds, and sustained throughout. The strands converge with the sonic booming sequenced pulse’n’atmo (vocoder too?) of “Warmth of the Sun”’s denouement. The warp and weave of its timbral cloth is varied along the way with some tracks of more ‘singular’ habit, i.e. unadorned with Bell’s chiming, like the lighter tonefloat of “Sun Stroke,” contrasting with the gathering plangency of “Does It Go Dark?” and the suggestive sound-color tweakage of a Cortini-channeling “Luminescence.”
PCA adepts who’ve followed the project’s trajectory over the last decade may miss the signature purr and prod of bass propulsion and its dynamic; but they will find here new skin for the old ceremony, with fresh, or reformed, pleasures, wrapped/rapt as they are in diaphanous new configurations.
Let’s Emerge! is available on Sonic Cathedral. [Bandcamp]
