Experimental Electronic Music
A quarter of a century on from optimal.lp’s release, then, its timelessness is still palpable, even enhanced, with the reissue’s addition of three tracks made while working on it, plus a new take on the closing “Tank” (digital only): in prepping the reissue, running one of the masters through a customized reverb unit, he began recording the outcome of this haptic past-inside-the-present dialog.
The best course of action is to just jump in and take in the vast scenery that is offered here. Joachim Stiller offers extended synth strands and micro-sound abstractions, reminiscent of vintage Subotnick experiments.
Appealing and introverted feelings pass over the full album, trembling at the sounding surface with a hazy solemnity. Colorful and warm, the soundscapes are spiritually nurturing; enriched by subtle melodic lines and cultivate a sensation of freedom and lightness.
Behind ’t Gerius is Belgian sound-wrangler, Daniel, who’s hit on a hermetic audioworld at once delicate and distorted, refined and uncouth; sound seen as if through a glass blurrily, yet sharply—alive with microsound like a fungi forest close-up.
Jonathan Deasy delivers moody modular manifests on sketches and themes; delicately choreographed microsound explorations teeter on Subotnick-like terrain.
Vale showcases eight genuine sceneries that drift and break apart.
A suite of tracks exploring the impermanent sound objects and their evolution across time and into silence, bringing glitchy, ambient, microsound, experimental, avant-garde, modern classical, creation decay.
Where minuscule errors loop, dither, and fade, these precious slices, while seemingly arcane, tend to explore organic worlds; their blissful bristles and tangible electrical machinery merge with expansive and detuned instruments that we can’t quite pin down.
