After hundreds of hours of music on Bandcamp and in tiny handmade, self-released editions, Phlegmgemming is the first “real” (his word) release for this artist, which is to say his first label release.
After hundreds of hours of music on Bandcamp and in tiny handmade, self-released editions, Phlegmgemming is the first “real” (his word) release for this artist, which is to say his first label release. Yes, “his,” for Sonja Berlin-Jones is a gentleman from Southampton whose fascinating, hermetic career you can read about here.
The cleverly-named head rush ”Stammerer” is a half-hour of his particular trademark dub techno, careening at speed, stuffed with rhythms, the faulty-mechanics conceit echoing the genre´s hetmen at Basic Channel and Chain Reaction but undermined by literal “stammerings,” where the fluid, maximalist roll elegantly trips over itself only to regain equilibrium. ”Hospicely-Timeless” is a Zen brook running through a Zen garden with looped Zen bells tolling softly, its resound shifting slowly as the seasons. “Frisked” is extended dub ambient, numerous loops alley-ooping over soft-shoe draggy beats, dripping rich, golden glockenspiel notes. Like his body of work as a whole, it is about mutability, the pliability of ostensible sameness over duration, only on “Frisked,” more so. On “Abortive Downtempo Ten,” we hear a sampled (Russian?) voice among clusters of piano woven in and out like a shoe lace bow. Also nice and long, fifteen minutes, enjoy the shifts and changes.
Shortly before the arrival of this release, the artist declared Sonja Berlin-Jones’ forced retirement, and reappeared under a new name, with a new discography already bursting with permutations and variations on his particular obsessions.
Also highly recommended on the two-year-old Liverpool label’s discography is the self-titled, cassette collection of colorful storybook ambient tales by Bisamråtta, guitarist Vladimir Luchansky of Novosibirsk, a dappled collection of smiles, kisses and sighs at odds with its weirdly anatomizing, Swedish-language titles.
Phlegmgemming is available on Rest Relax.
