A manifest of intergalactic drones, tones, and serene landscapes.
Xurba (aka Will Brazier-Smith) has traversed a few genres over the years, from brittle nostalgia-infused downtempo, to roughened clip-hop stints, to surreal ambient plateaus with a growing discography to boot. The latter is precisely where his latest album Epikýrosi tou Dasikoú Pnévmatos lands—its core is a manifest of intergalactic drones, tones, and serene landscapes. Tracks like “Koliada Nizsi Boh Slinka” lift off with subtle bleeps and weaving magnetic flutter. Parallel to the trajectory Xurba has taken, “Prismoscedelian Rayzecana” crafts an otherworldly charisma where organic materials come to life just as soon as they vanish into thin air. Darker corridors are discovered via turbulent vocal bits, skewed digital effects, and a thick fog on “Rachlnkvok Gwozdek.” This new album elicits very little in terms of percussion, but rather its language is based on blissful world influences that fans of early Sun Electric, System 7, Global Communication, and Legion Of Green Men might enjoy. Swirling atmospheric ice sheets on “Hyperreality” could very well be the crowning achievement while Xurba navigates these ten delicate sonic abstracts. As Eno once put it: “Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular,” and Epikýrosi tou Dasikoú Pnévmatos does just that.
Epikýrosi tou Dasikoú Pnévmatos is available on Electric Studios.
