Clearly skilled with that beast of a machine, tamiX spends over 60 minutes slowly morphing melodies and arpeggios while bringing some rhythm inbound at key points to keep the interest going.
Coaxing extrasolar sounds from a NASA-looking control panel
There’s a lot of great stuff going on here with tamiX‘s debut solo album, X NEW YEAR. This isn’t a typical album release as it’s a recording of a live Buchla 200e modular session in a venue in Beijing, China. Clearly skilled with that beast of a machine, tamiX spends over 60 minutes slowly morphing melodies and arpeggios while bringing some rhythm inbound at key points to keep the interest going—and hopefully inspiring the handful of dancers spread around the venue.
As a self-described improvisational electronic live music and visual artist, she has a knack for pacing and exploration. In today’s incessant context switching world and competition for our attention, it’s nice to see an artist that has the patience to let the beauty unfold naturally, especially in a live setting. She’s in great company with that approach with Nils Frahm or The Orb, where a song can just keep going for days on end (and sometimes we all wish it would—YouTube). Also, it’s quite a thing to observe her deft navigation of a pile of modular spaghetti, the likes of which would make Colin Bender blush.
She’s coaxing extrasolar sounds from a NASA-looking control panel, both of which are definitely right at home in orbit around Earth. This is an album to put on your good pair of headphones, find a comfortable chair, close your eyes, and turn off notifications—but be ready to jump out of your chair for track 8, “268e,” when the exercise in arp bliss turns into an A1 tip-top clubbing jam fair—YouTube. Now I just need to secure the flight to China to see tamiX do her stuff live! Jiayou! 加油!
X NEW YEAR is available on Detroit Underground. [Bandcamp]
