Lurji T’algha
Crash Sounds, 2022
9/10
The Georgia resident and multi-instrumentalist Ben Wheeler plays the sort of music you really can’t describe, but that will keep you quite interested in its unpredictable, unclassifiable nature as he brings improvisational modular synthesizer performance, acoustic soundtrack composition, ethnomusicology field recordings and community radio sound FX to this rich and tone specific listen.
Wheeler leads the album with the cinematic and sci-fi friendly title track, where repetition is used like a refined science, and this imagination continues to the louder, buzzing “Foam”, where glitchy, techno nods are present.
In the middle, the mechanical sounds of “Mtsvana T’algha” unfolds with a noisy barrage of calculated droning, while “Ripple” is a brief display of aberrant, almost video game-esque manipulation.
Further into the listen, “Bneli T’algha” offers a more dreamy landscape of fluttering keys and adventurous percussive sounds, and “Spider Crab” exits the listen with radiant, cosmic and truly iconoclastic songwriting that you won’t soon forget.
Experimental in all the best ways and abstractly defiant, Wheeler doesn’t waste anytime on this absorbing body of work that is truly a one of a kind effort.
Travels well with: Chikiss- Something Natural; Log Across The Washer- It’s Funny How The Colors