Perhaps it’s the time of year or my inescapable decrepitude, but the armchair seems to be my destination more often than the dancefloor right now. Maybe it’s just that a lot of superb ambient/drone/slippercore music’s being released at the moment: Black To Comm (see AD015), cacao (see below), Rameses III (see below); I could go on (see below). Pushing its way towards the front of that estimable bunch is The Beautiful Schizophonic, aka Jorge Mantas, whose Erotikon doesn’t waste time in enfolding you in piling waves of rich, subtly melodic texture. ‘Aysha’ and ‘Bambilány’ show just what you can do within the drone framework, brief dabs of birdsong or hushed vocals imparting a panoramic sense of wonder.
Even when Mantas pursues more chilling moods, as with the hollowed-out tonalities of ‘Nocturnosque’, an innate musicality is still clearly apparent in its swaying distortions. The magnificent ‘Alba’ stitches a sample of Au Clair de la Lune from 1860, the earliest known recording of a human voice, into the haunting piano playing of Yui Onodera. ‘Fornarina, with its puffs of glowing notes rising up around an LA phone conversation, is a warmer adjunct to Robin Rimbaud’s work as Scanner, while the 14-minute wash of closing track ‘Pollen’ hits pretty much every pleasure centre that ambient music can reach. Chris Power
via Drowned in Sound
