Valance Drakes :: An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood (Amek)

Miniscule and refined audio shuffling, the architectural soundscape Valance Drakes displays is a visceral amalgam that shines the light on an ethereal universe very few traverse so blissfully. Baffling yet carefully orchestrated, An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood is by far one of Valance Drakes’ most established work to date, 10-tracks of utterly sincere glitch abstracts and one that features Richard Devine.

Curating infinite worlds by splitting tiny musical fragments and glitch fibers, Valance Drakes reveals An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood for Bulgaria’s Amek—”…sourced from an array of sonic realms, including recordings from his visits to Sofia, Bulgaria, the album carries an autobiographical sincerity.” We could not agree more with this assessment and have been following the prolific UK-based artist for several years.

Organic electronic sounds interlaced, interwoven, and overlapping each other, An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood displays broken shards of glass collected and carefully spliced together. Audible bits, bites, blips, and bleeps are manipulated ever so slightly in a slow motion haze with beautiful noise to round off each piece. An otherworldly charm and a downtempo pulse is punctuated from start to end.

It’s difficult to describe this release without falling into another dimension. There is such beauty in its subtlety, its building melodies, and articulated beats, that it’s hard not to lose yourself in its mist. An evolution—perhaps a blurring of trees one might say—is redefined in the now. Valance Drakes takes microscopic sounds and elevates them to new plateaus with a precision that is unmatched in the glitch field. A mixture of crisp beats, distilled DSP, and emotive soundscapes buried in the background, each rhythm jumps out as you lose yourself in its tones and drones. No need to focus on any one particular piece—each an expansion of the other—these tracks flow into and out of focus. A nostalgic mood is stitched throughout its 30-minute duration which feels more like an eternity.

Miniscule and refined audio shuffling, the architectural soundscape Valance Drakes displays is a visceral amalgam that shines the light on an ethereal universe very few traverse so blissfully. Baffling yet carefully orchestrated, An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood is by far one of Valance Drakes’ most established work to date, 10-tracks of utterly sincere glitch abstracts and one that features Richard Devine.

An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood is available on Amek.