Category Archives: Trance

Death of a Santoor

To Ustad Zakir Hussain

When I heard the master of santoor isNo more, I played his jugalbandi with youOn the tabla, the strings in vilambit layaFelt like droplets of water on the grass,I could hear the flight of a grasshopper.Nature spoke to nature. We are hereTo listen, the nature of each instrumentMerges with the nature of another,And music is born. You join him midwayLike a ship sets sail to the tempo of wind.What were you telling each other? This isAll there is? Tat Tvam Asi: Thou art that,You are each other. The sound of yourHands in trance, this is all that remains ofHistory, this is what heals the bloodThat flows in the absence of music. YourNames bring your gods together, theyHear you like children before the wordWas born, you play on. Fishes in the bloodNibble on the flesh, old landscapes dieBefore the eyes, time gently goes to sleep.

[The death of the eminent santoor player, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, marked the end of an era in Indian classical music. He had singularly popularised the gentle string instrument, the santoor, worldwide. He played along with some of the finest classical musicians in India and abroad. Sharma, long with the flutist, Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, also composed music briefly for some romantic musicals in Indian cinema. Sharma also played memorable jugalbandi (duets) with Ustad Zakir Hussain, the legendary tabla player. The photograph of Hussain standing alone near the pyre at Sharmas funeral, seeing his old friend and fellow musician depart from this world, was a poignant and touching reminder of love and friendship in an atmosphere of hatred and violence. This tribute to the late maestro is dedicated to his friend, Zakir Hussain, and their performances together.]

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer and political science scholar. He is the author ofThe Town Slowly Empties: On Life and Culture during Lockdown(Headpress, Copper Coin, 2021),Looking for the Nation: Towards another Idea of India(Speaking Tiger, 2018), andGhalibs Tomb and Other Poems(London Magazine Editions, 2013).

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Poem: Death of a Santoor - The Wire

The Northman is loosely based on the Norse mythology about a young Viking prince named Amleth, in Vita Amlethi. The story is about how Amleth manages to avenge the death of his father, King Aurvandil, who was killed by his brother, Fjlnir. Inspired by Nordic literature and lifestyle, the film comes up with an original story that would be fitting for the Viking age. What makes The Northman overtly believable is the research that went into getting the visual details right, be it the way people lived in Iceland during the time or the fact that many Vikings escaped the regulations and traveled from Scandinavian countries to Iceland. The Viking Icelandic settlements were studied for their rightful depiction in the film.

Amleth had witnessed the beheading of his father, King Aurvandill, by his brother, Fjolnir. He had only one purpose in life from then on: he wanted to kill Fjolnir. It was the desire to seek revenge that kept him alive. After running away from the Kingdom of Hrafnsey, Amleth had grown to be a Viking berserker. The berserkers were warriors who ransacked settlements, and they drew their maddening power from the bears and wolves. The night before the attack, they would indulge in a trance ritual wearing skins of the animals. They would mimic the movements and sounds of the bears and wolves, and as the day would break, they would enter the villages camouflaging themselves with the animal skins and ultimately revealing their intentions. One particular scene that perfectly described the barbarians during the act was when Amleth tore the flesh off an armed man to kill him. During the raid, it was about transforming themselves into animals and murdering humans at will. According to Norse mythology, it is said that the berserkers shapeshifted into animals and won battles for themselves.

The seers were an integral part of the Viking era. They enjoyed a high status during that time for their ability to foretell the future. Their eyes were sewn shut; even though they could not see the physical reality, they had the power to look at both the past and the future. At night, when Amleth met with a seeress at the temple of Odin in the village they raided, she recognized him. She knew it was Prince Amleth, even though the world thought he was dead. She reminded him of the revenge he had to take and how he could get closer to his motive. She advised him to cross the ocean and reach the edge of the world to land on an island where he would meet a vixen. He had to follow its tail, and he would reach the place where he could find a sword that was designed to destroy his enemy. This revelation of the plot much before Amleth started his journey reflects the power that the seeress held. The Seeresses were known for practicing an ecstasy technique called the Seid to travel through time to reveal secrets.

After his confrontation with his mother, Gudrun, she revealed how cowardly King Aurvandill was as a husband. Amleth was shocked to learn the truth about her mother, who confessed to loving Fjolnir and wanting the death of Amleth. In that moment of fury, Amleth murdered Fjolnirs elder son, Thorir. The funeral ceremony that followed Thorirs death demonstrates the burial customs of the Viking age. Thorir was given a ship burial where his body was laid on a boat, and he was offered all that he required to make the journey to his after-life smooth, which also included sacrificing enslaved people. We witness a slave girl joining Thorir in the boat, indicating how she was sacrificing her life for her master. She joined him to serve him in his after-life as well.

In the concluding scene, Amleth, before dying, envisioned his wife and his two children. They were happy and safe. It was his sacrifice that protected them from the evil that could destroy their lives. According to his vision and the words of the seeress, his daughter would grow up to be a maiden king. He fought his enemies in the present time to protect his daughter, who had a bright future ahead. In the end, Olga tells him to cross the passage. The journey every warrior hopes to make after losing their lives on the battlefield. It was considered the highest honor to die on the battleground, as that meant that they would have a place in Valhalla. According to Norse mythology, Valhalla is a royal hall that is located in Asgard, which is ruled by Odin. Valhalla translates to the hall of the slain. Amleth was at peace when he was carried on a winged horse by the Valkyries. The Valkyries were female figures who guided the Nordic warriors to the majestic hall of the slain.

See More: The Northman Ending, Explained: Did Almeth Avenge His Fathers Death? Is Almeth Dead Or Alive?

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Is 'The Northman' Based On A True Story? What Do The Viking Practices Shown In The Film Signify? | DMT - DMT

oday marks the first death anniversary of a man who in life was larger than life: Tahir Wadood Malik, my dear husband, known amongst his loved ones as TWM.

Its a day Ive dreaded, through sleepless nights and agonising days. But it has arrived, as a reminder of the horrifying two and a half weeks we experienced together after being diagnosed with Covid-19, till the last message I received from him before he was put on the ventilator.

He never returned. Since then, life hasnt been the same for me. The days and nights arent the same, home isnt the same, our pets arent the same.

He was not a typical fauji with a broad chest and a thick mustache; he possessed a very sensitive heart. He was a man who had the patience to hear the opposing views and argue with logic. He was a living encyclopedia of history and culture, whod go into a trance every time mystic music was played. He was a voice for those who had lost their loved ones to terrorism. He was also Uncle KFC to kids!

We often say that life leads us where we least expected to go. Widowhood is one such territory. From the minute youre widowed, people expect you to feel, behave and react the socially acceptable way. They preach and try to mould you, your appearance, and your state of mind as per their norms. They dont understand that the iddat period is meant not only to confirm whether you are pregnant but also for you to process grief. It can last longer than the prescribed four and a half months. Sometimes the grief can last an eternity. They claim that they are with you but soon will fade away from the picture, abandoning you with piles of official documents, societal pressures, in deep legal waters, and wading through a patriarchal system, especially if you are beginning to take charge of things.

In this turmoil, you try to start living your life, because that is the only option. You start doing things for the first time without your beloved. This past year has been the year of such firsts for me. This fact makes the period all the more difficult. Memories can drain you emotionally and physically. As you wash the bed sheets which he last slept in, and clean the toothbrush he used, and feel his clothes hung in the cupboard that still smell of him, and the last cigar that touched his lips these things become permanent for you.

Sadly, very few friends understood how much it hurt, and fewer still said that I should take the time I needed to move on with life.

You go through stages of grief without really recognising them. The unfortunate part is that there arent any support groups to speak of. So, you are expected to bemoan and grieve briefly, and then snap out of it, because the very people who lent you a shoulder to cry on have tired of listening to your sob story or having to repeat their part over and over.

They will also judge you if you try to return to life. If you have a child, youll be told that you should feel blessed, without realising how difficult it is to be a single parent. As for those who are issueless, they are expected to thank God, as if not having a child makes moving on in life any easier.

My experience has been no different. Soon after his death, I received a call from a friend based in Dubai. She said, You cannot live there any longer. Tell me how we can get you out of there.

I did not take her concern seriously, but today I do understand what she meant.

The writer is a freelance journalist

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A year of firsts - The News International

The date was June 11 2005. It was a Saturday night and judging by these photos, it was packed. But were you there? Dave Pearce and his team took these photos and have kindly allowed us to publish them to recapture memories of fun times. And if you fancy reliving those clubbing days of the noughties theres a chance to do so on June 2. Back to the Old Pool is presenting Syndicate Thursdays Reunion at Blackpool's Trilogy Nightclub. Dave Pearce will be there with Nalin and Kane, Lost Witness, Divine Inspiration and Jason Fubar. Full of all the club classics, hard dance and trance.

Happy days for these two

Photo: Dave Pearce

The Syndicate nightclub, Blackpool

Photo: Christian Blake

Enjoying Blackpool's superclub

Photo: Dave Pearce

Crowds packed on the revolving dancefloor

Photo: Dave Pearce

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The Syndicate: 18 picture memories from a night out at Blackpool's superclub - were you there? - Blackpool Gazette

DETROIT When a man is lost, sings Betty Shabazz, Malcolm Xs wife, does the sky bleed for him, or does the sunset ignore his tears?

The start of a smoldering aria, these words may be the most poetic and poignant in Anthony Daviss opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Especially poignant because, for several decades, X, too, has been ignored.

The work, with a libretto by Thulani Davis, the composers cousin, from a story by his brother, Christopher Davis, premiered in the mid-1980s, first in Philadelphia and, officially, at New York City Opera. And then largely silence.

For the past 36 years, it has been more talked about than heard. (An excellent studio recording from 1992 is now out of print.) And it was obvious, at the opening of a new production on Saturday at the Detroit Opera House, what X gains from being taken in live: Its stretches of incantation turn into something like a sacred rite.

In these passages, over carpets of complex, repeating rhythms in the orchestra, the ensemble chants short lines Africa for Africans, Betrayal is on his lips, Freedom, justice, equality again and again, building and overlapping. The opera is at its best in these long swaths of music poised between churning intensity and stillness. Without copying the prayer practices of Malcolms Muslim faith, the work evokes them.

Bringing X back to the stage is a coup for Detroit Opera, which has recently rebranded itself after 50 years as Michigan Opera Theater, inaugurating a new era under the artistic leadership of Yuval Sharon.

Sharon came to prominence as the founder of the experimental Los Angeles company the Industry, and he is swiftly bringing ambitious, inventive programming to Detroit, like a Gtterdmmerung in a parking garage and a La Bohme whose four acts are played in reverse. The field is noticing what hes up to: As part of a widespread effort to belatedly present more works by Black composers and librettists, this X will travel to the Metropolitan Opera (in fall 2023), Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera Omaha and Seattle Opera.

In biopic style, the libretto sketches an outline of a short but eventful life: the murder of Malcolms father when Malcolm is a boy in Lansing, Mich.; his mothers mental breakdown; his move to live with his half sister in Boston, where he falls in with a fast crowd and ends up in prison; his jailhouse conversion to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam; the success of his Black nationalist ministry; his rift with Muhammad over tactics; his pilgrimage to Mecca; and the glimmers of a more universalist ideology of peace and racial unity, which he barely gets a chance to expound before his assassination in 1965, at just 39.

All this is conveyed in the heightened register of opera. Even the dialogue is pithy and exalted: I come from a desert of pain and remorse. The music is varied and resourceful; Davis won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for his most recent opera, The Central Park Five, but X is a deeper score.

It begins in a mournful, noirish mood, the moments of anxiety flirting with blues and subtle swing. Guided sensitively by the conductor Kazem Abdullah, the music goes on to swerve from punchy modernism to lyrical lushness, from peaceful worship to nervous energy and stentorian forcefulness.

An essay in the program describes how Daviss original contract specified that the word jazz should not be used in any connection with this piece, though an innovation here was to embed an improvising ensemble within a traditional orchestra. This works smoothly, as when a saxophone aptly depicts Malcolms new life in big-city Boston, or when a wailing, longing trumpet accompanies prayer in Mecca. The prisoners choral dirge is heated by squeals of brass, smoking underneath; along with Bettys enigmatically tender aria, this is the most intriguing music of the opera.

The new production, directed by Robert OHara (Slave Play), has a unit set, by Clint Ramos, that evokes the partly ruined Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, where Malcolm was killed. (The mountain pass mural painted on the back wall of the ballrooms stage depicts an idyll that seems like its almost taunting the operas characters.)

Above hover some big, swooping curves, used as a projection screen for textures, animated designs and a scrolling list of names of victims of white violence, before and after Malcolm. The staging is inspired by Afrofuturism, the attempt to conceive new often fanciful, sometimes celestial circumstances for a people suffering under crushing oppression.

Imagine a world where Marcus Garveys Black Star Line is a spaceship, OHara writes in a program note, referring to the Back to Africa movement in which Malcolms parents participated. But it is when the curves take on the literal flashing lights of such a ship that things turn a bit risible, conjuring the vessel in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial more than noble dreams of escape and revision.

More effective is the introduction of four male dancers their sinuous choreography is by Rickey Tripp who snake through the production, sometimes as guardian angels looking over Young Malcolm (Charles Dennis), sometimes as squiggly punctuation to scenes. The spare flexibility that OHara introduces mostly works, even if the librettos specificity of place and situation gets sacrificed in this more abstract vision. Malcolms basic progress is still clear less so the particulars of where he is and to whom, exactly, hes speaking. The result, not unpleasantly, is more dream ballet than CNN.

Malcolm, though, still wears his distinctive browline glasses. He is played here with superb control by the bass-baritone Davne Tines, steady, calm and committed in both his physical presence and grounded voice, with a fiery core that seethes in his main aria, I would not tell you what I know, at the end of Act I.

As Malcolms mother and his wife, the soprano Whitney Morrison sings with mellow strength. Charming as Street, who spiffs up Malcolm in Boston, the tenor Victor Ryan Robertson largely handles Elijah Muhammads muscular high lines but strains to convey his magnetism.

X sometimes hypnotizes but sometimes sags. Like Philip Glasss Satyagraha, about Gandhis early years in South Africa, the opera is conceived as a steadily progressing account of a historical figures ideological evolution, dispensing with traditional dramatic tension. The main human conflict, between Malcolm and Elijah, is only lightly touched on; its not the plot.

Satyagraha, though, fully gives itself over to stylization, its Sanskrit text detached from the action, its scenes pageantlike. The music and libretto of X, by contrast, keep promising crackling drama without quite delivering; there can be a sense of falling between the stools of trance-like repetition and standard storytelling.

Scattered throughout are interludes that musically feel like vamping and that offer little obvious pretext for action. After so many years, the creators seem to have perceived the need to do something with these expanses We have added a few lines of singing in places that were musical interludes, Thulani Davis writes in the program but they remain, and sap the energy.

Still X, for all its obvious admiration for its subject, is admirably resistant to mawkishness or melodrama, particularly in avoiding an operatic death scene: At the end, Malcolm takes the podium in the Audubon Ballroom and briefly greets his audience in Arabic. Then theres a blackout as gunfire rings out.

For all the talk of spaceships and a better tomorrow, it is an inescapably stark conclusion. There will always be gifted, visionary boys and men, the work seems to say in this new staging, but their futures are hardly assured.

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

Through May 22 at the Detroit Opera House; detroitopera.org.

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Review: After 36 Years, a Malcolm X Opera Sings to the Future - The New York Times

Nearly 20 years after its original release, As The Rush Comes by Motorcycle, more recently known as Gabriel & Dresden, gets a true modern makeover. The new release sees rising Australian talents Achilles and Lister apply their new-age production prowess to Motorcycles original, translating the iconic 2003 cut to a contemporary hit.

The new single gives the next generation of ravers a window into the uplifting beats and dreamy soundscapes of yesteryear. With fresh and spine-tingling vocals from Jesse Lee Thetford, As The Rush Comes lands smack dab in the intersection between classic trance and future rave inspirations, promising to please everyone from veteran listeners to up-and-coming ravers.

Having already found support from the likes of Tisto, Armin van Buuren, Hardwell, and Afrojack, Achilles and Lister are among the most exciting fresh acts in todays rave scene. Their new release, As The Rush Comes, is out now on digital streaming platforms.

Featured image: Press

Tags: achilles, afrojack, Armin Van Buuren, as the ruch comes, Gabriel & Dresden, Hardwell, jesse lee thetford, lister, motorcycle, tiesto

Categories: Music

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Achilles, Lister spin 2003 trance classic into modern rave bliss on 'As The Rush Comes' - Dancing Astronaut - Dancing Astronaut

Dance legend Ferry Corsten is to mark his groundbreaking new What The F live tour with an exclusive drop on RCRDSHP entitled Ferry Corsten presents What the F.

It includes a limited edition NFT of the keyboard he used right at the start of his career on some of his biggest hits which will be available for all his fans to grab, plus an exclusive new track, edits of huge remixes of his most timeless tracks by some legendary names in the dance world as well as virtual tour merch for meta-ravers, backstage moments from the kick-off of the show and much more. It lands on May 25th when What the F takes over his weekly show Resonation Radio on A State of Trance with various studio guests.

By any measure, Ferry Corsten is an electronic dance music titan. Ever since his debut album Out of the Blue under his trance music alias System F in 1999 topped the UK singles charts, he has been defining and redefining electronic dance music around the world.

To prove this, Ferry was recently knighted by the Dutch king for his contribution to the countrys music industry, an honour only two other Dutchman DJs have ever received. Over more than 20 years he has remixed everyone from U2 to Duran Duran to Justin Bieber, and has made widescreen and cinematic albums like 2017s Blueprint, soundtracks to movie thrillers like Dont Go and has headed up his charity project UNITY while collaborating with fellow legends like Paul Oakenfold, BT, Ilan Bluestone, and Sander van Doorn.

As the longest-serving Dutch DJ in the annual DJ Mag Top 100 poll over the last decade, he is no stranger to the worlds biggest stages from Tomorrowland to EDC Las Vegas and Creamfields. His Resonation Radio show is also an influential outlet for new music and constant proof of Ferrys dedication to pushing electronic music forward. Most recently, his piano house single Timeout with Dustin Husain on Flashover Recordings/Armada has proved the latest in a long line of classic tunes from the great Dutchman.

His all-encompassing What the F live tour kicked off at Londons Ministry of Sound on May 6th and heads all over North and South America in June and August for phase one, with phase two to follow soon. It is a career-spanning spectacle that finds Ferry playing open to close, from the first to the last record under all his different acclaimed aliases. Every tune will be one of Ferrys own, with numerous hits taken from his vast back catalog of over 150 tracks. Some of this music will be remixed, rehashed, and reinvented to make for an all-new and thrilling experience for this dance pioneer.

On top of all the exclusive collectibles are potential rewards from purchasing, collecting and completing sets of packs. Among them are guest list and/or backstage access to all What the F shows, free merchandise, and for NFT fans and music super fans alike, the Grand prize which is a one of a kind (mythical) NFT digital audio tape (DAT) of Ferry Corsten: Out of the Blue, the story behind his classic Out of the Blue, which was originally going to come under Ferrys own name but instead established System F as one of dance musics most iconic alias and topped global charts while becoming one of dance musics biggest hits.

This first-ever Ferry Corsten drop on RCRDSHP is full of absolute treasure for fans and offers a unique chance to own some real trance history. In unison with the groundbreaking new What The F Tour, it reminds us just why the dance legend is so revered around the world.

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Dance Legend Ferry Corsten Launches Global What The F Tour With Exclusive NFT Drop - The Music Essentials

Jono Grant, one-third of the iconic progressive trance trio Above & Beyond has announced a new musical project in-tandem with longtime friend and musical collaborator Darren Tate. Entitled JODA, the joint-effort hones in on core foundational elements of dance music, with a focus on vintage synths and authentic sounds of progressive trance.

The first single "We Found Ourselves" is out now via Anjunabeats and proves to be a refreshing dose of classic, yet innovative sounds that set the stage for more music to come from the freshly minted project.Jono Grant is one-third of Above & Beyond who, over the course of a two-decade career, have established themselves as one of the biggest electronic groups in the world. Eight studio albums (including one as vocal trance group OceanLab and two acoustic reworks), 17 compilation albums, a film score, and nearing 100 singles speak to output as varied as it is prodigious. Their label Anjunabeats is home to a bustling community of artists with over twenty years of catalog.

As a classically trained musician, songwriter, producer, and hitmaker, Darren Tate is an OG Top of the Pops-botherer. In the early Noughties, at the outset of his career, he appeared on the show three times, once with Angelic, his collaboration with Judge Jules and the latters wife, performing classic trance banger Its My Turn, then twice under the name Jurgen Vries.

The two musicians have history that spans a musical relationship of two decades.In 2003, the pair managed to sync their schedules to work on a couple of tracks, "Let The Light Shine In" and "Nocturnal Creatures", stumbling upon an organic chemistry. As the pairs respective careers subsequently took them off around the world in opposite directions, reconnecting to work together further posed challenging.

Then in 2019 Tate returned to his trance roots and signed to Anjunabeats for his DT8 Project releases. Around the same time, Above & Beyond received an offer to score an environmental documentary, 'The Last Glaciers'

I'm musical, but I've never done a score before, which would be quite an undertaking. And I knew Darren was massively experienced at doing that, and I've always admired what he does in his film work. So my first thought was: why don't we do it with Darren?, shares Jono.

Jono and Darren found themselves composing together again, resulting in strong mutual affinities for new music resulting in the newly minted JODA.Working in Tates studio in suburban north London, and A&Bs south London HQ, the pair were in a creative bubble during the early days of the pandemic, with their partnership proving fruitful.

Watch this space for more from JODA across spring and summer 2022. "We Find Ourselves" is out now on Anjunabeats.

Connect with JODA: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify | Twitter

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Jono Grant of Above & Beyond and Darren Tate unveil new project 'JODA' - EARMILK - EARMILK

Above & Beyond launch new record label ReflectionsAbove & Beyond are launching a brand new record label. Accompanying the Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep counterparts, the new label is called Reflections. The third Anjuna record label is our new downtempo and ambient imprint called Reflections, and we are delighted to share it with you. Reflections is born from all those moments in between the dancefloors. the trance trio state.

Where Anjunabeats is for the classic, uplifting trance and progressive sound and Anjunadeep focuses on deeper, house tunes (helmed by James Grant), Reflections is a place for those moments of tranquility, the tracks where a dancefloor filler moment isnt the focus point. Ambient, downtempo and alternative, it will be a place where fans can get to love new artists as part of the Anjuna roster, and who well be sure to see on event lineups of theirs in the future. Promising a mix of familiar faces and fresh names, it will be interesting to see who releases on this label, and what new artists well get to love.

Speaking about the label, James Grant says:

Reflections feels like a pretty intuitive thing for us. This is a genre that we have a history in, and one we belong in. If you look back on what weve done, on the Above and Beyond albums, theres always been two or three standout downtempo tracks that have connected really well. Whats significant about this is that in all the time weve been doing this, there have been a lot of moments where someone suggested setting up a new label. Weve always resisted because we wanted to focus on supporting the artists we have. So we only had two frontline labels: Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep. Reflections is our third frontline label.he beautiful thing is, a lot of our artists were already either making stuff like this, or are fully capable of making great music like this. Weve got a ready-made artist base to start from. Weve always focused on emotional, soulful and melodic dance music, so with Reflections, you could probably just remove the dance part here.

So when can we hear the first lot of new music from Reflections? Excitingly, Above & Beyond themselves are kicking it all off on May 16, with not one, but two new tracks titled Morning In Deira / Time Heals which you can pre-save here. The label also has three playlists called Sleep, Focus and Relax, and a new 24/7 radio stream on their YouTube channel, which all will give fans an indicator as to whats to come from the label.

Image credit: press

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Above & Beyond announce new record label Reflections - We Rave You

Published May 11, 2022

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In 2020, the producer born Chol Eul was diagnosed with a heart disease called atrial fibrillation, a condition that can manifest in rapid heart palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath and a heart rate of 203 BPM (faster than trance music, a press release points out). It was also a red flag that demanded intense isolation and multiple trips to the emergency room at the height of uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

But on his new album Love Infinity, Eul sounds as enchanted as he was alienated by the hand he was dealt, generating spaces that range from brutal and desolate, to fertile and connective.Animating that tension, there's a new penchant for vaporous synthesizer tones that could soar through city skylines, but beats still land with crunchy distortion bearing the rough tactility and populist physicality of arcade fighting games; the industrial compulsions that have long defined Eul's EBM are not so much diminished as they are sublimated and given a new organic quality, pumping and pulsing like a portrait of the body as overworked factory.

Where Eul's voice featured prominently on 2018's Performing a Crime and infused that record with an austere, goth-punk energy, the more prominent voices on Love Infinity are the softly affected contributions of guests. The producer has spoken of his attempts to undermine EBM's masculinity on previous releases, and appearances from the likes of Toronto producer/DJ Kayla Domenica and Seoul's Leevisa further that project, Eul deploying them in ways that reinforce the record's conceptual grounding.

Musically inspired by the social media phenomenon where users will mass document the collective experience of a particularly striking sunset, "Screen Resolution" features Domenica delivering both sides of a spoken dialogue between "Heaven" and "Earth." To which character each line in the exchange belongs is ambiguous to the ear, but captioning in the accompanying video clarifies things, playing into the track's title. Eul's hardware plays up the harmony between the celestial and the earthly, extended synth notes radiating networked golden hour warmth and solace, while deep, throbbing bass drums ground it all in the rhythm of daily life.

The album's title track is cast in another amber glow, Leevisa delivering an impressionistic portrait of human dependence and withdrawal: "Scotch, turn, gin / Sherry cask, turn, gin / Bourbon, Olmeca," she coos in Korean throughout the track, spirits rolling off the tongue, "Cinnamon orange finish." Later in the track, the image of the sun returns, this time an idol of disconnection: "I open my eyes / To see a bright sun in the distance / Shines between us / Never to imagine / The two of us endlessly walking together."

Whether galvanizing or punishing, moments of daylight are interspersed with nocturnal scenes throughout the album, conveying a rapid passing of time. "Life Vessel" sounds like an aural time-lapse of public transit, while the shimmering club euphoria of "Fragrance Unity" feels like it's gliding through a fishbowl of apartment light lens flares.

Drifting mechanically from job to apartment and back again, Love Infinity's characters seek refuge in temporary gratification, pawing idly through Instagram or pacing the liquor store for chemical gratification. But the album goes beyond that depressive hedonism to console a loneliness that feels just as specific as it does universal, Eul's overworked heart beating not just for himself, but the world around him, too.

Again and again, Love Infinity takes an atmosphere of hustle and time scarcity and meets it with abundance, literally slowing things down to regroup. In one track's title, he even hints the solution might be programmed into the problem "Saturation Clarity." The first of a two-part suite, "Hybrid Human Pt. I" rolls with the sensory overload of a punching bag pugilism, and its other half emerges from it with a sense of relaxed flexibility. "Ten Thousand Years" borrows its name from an ancient Chinese blessing of long life once reserved for emperors, but has since trickled into mundane vernacular throughout the East Asian cultural sphere. It sets sampled speech floating around monotonous, booming kicks, tweeting synthesizers and twisty patches to dizzying effect; as sonic metaphor, it's a psychedelic account of the way information's spread diffuses hegemonic power.

For all the moments of darkness, Love Infinity is about hope. However difficult they are to predict, the rhythms are just patterns. They can be manipulated, overcome. For Eul, they will be. They have to be.(Perpetual Care)

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Joel Eel's Heart Works Harder Than Most on 'Love Infinity' - Exclaim!