Following 2020’s acclaimed Fractal Future Plays, the British experimental musician returns with his sixth LP, an excellent exploration across pastoral psychedelia, lysergic polyrhythms and beautiful field recordings on tricky themes of belonging in an age of post-Brexit and gentrification. There’s an otherworldly, mesmeric magic at play with curtains of sonic ripples and static, birdsong and more to an hallucinatory effect, with Cheshire’s deep, sensitive voice at times reminiscent of Syd Barrett’s inventive otherness. As with his last LP, there are literary influences, this time the fantastical, visionary Vorrh Trilogy by B Caitling, themed around an ancient sentient forest, human greed and consumption, psychic and physical colonisation and the mysterious power of nature. Here then are transportative songs, from the alluring chants and clever rhythms of psych folk opener Transmigrations or the slow, meditative Valium, a deliciously odd state of seeking “warm fuzz of oblivion / Dancing static valium / Where I can't be found”. Heavy Rotations is an intricate, restless journey of chattering electronica and cross-rhythm drums, and inner voices where “the mind loops in endless orbit”. Voices Above Me meanwhile takes more of a catchy, krautrock groove, “underneath a paper moon I dissolve into the gloom … I am nameless / Here where the world keeps spinning around”. Maps is a shimmering, twinkling number of magical beauty, while the title track creates a cityscape of arpeggios across haunting spoken voices about empty career goals and dystopian situations: “You have surrendered control / And agreed to the terms and conditions.” Surprises come at every turn, taking us to new places with clever sounds, lyrical twists, and even more so with the field recordings of birds on Fall In, Fall Out, or closing song The Swimmer, an exquisite, gentle acoustic number of guitar, cello and later on, reversed sounds, with a woozy feeling of floating in a gorgeously disorientating, dark “temporal mess” of intricate beauty. Magical, innovative, intelligent and sensual, another unique, unusual gem of a record. Out on Loose Tongue Records.
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