Avalon comes over as well-behaved, the mood is chill with a pinch of mystery.
Ruxpin‘s Avalon was originally released in 2003 (via the Elektrolux imprint) and is now re-released as a remastered version in April of 2018. One can definitely hear the age as it sounds like classic Millennial IDM or Melodic IDM or as I heard Surachai say, describing the late-night Lullaby IDM Facebook posts of his friend Richard Devine quite adequately, Dad-IDM.
Avalon comes over as well-behaved, the mood is chill with a pinch of mystery, but still it’s all good – mystery au contraire to there’s something wrong mystery. If you have a bad trip this album can ground you, while IDM-ish beats massage your sore soul. I miss some originality though: the beats are quite straight with occasional swung 32th and the timbres supposedly fresh, coming over a tad stale in 2018, like Ruxpin robbed a Melodic-IDM-Sample-Bank. Back in 2003 it would sound fresher to me, though it wouldn’t blow my mind either. Not all millennial IDM aged that way. Ruxpin has a clean approach to sound design, however, not mingling enough to feel the intimate, idiosyncratic touch of the producer. This clean IDM style was absorbed by the commercial advert, movie, game and sound-library scenes during the following decade. Ruxpin lets us closer to himself in the robo-vocoder-vocals sprinkled throughout Avalon and the aforementioned it’s all good – mystery—harmony, synth-pads.
Avalon is meant for those evenings when you have friends over for whom modern IDM would be too much and ambient would be too elevator. If you want to cozily hang out and talk about everything and anything, without being disturbed by bombastic drama of, say, Arca, Ruxpin’s Avalon is the perfect choice.
Avalon (Remastered) is available on Sun Sea Sky.
