Traces
REV. Lab, 2024
8/10
A highly artistic collaboration between Filax Staël and Okko Perekki, the sounds here represent a collage of experiences, conversations and images from a superbly creative mind.
The repetitive throbbing of “Ellipse” starts the listen with a distinct droning, and it isn’t long until “Hunted Beyond The Glory Of Light” emits eerie keys and a unconventional tonality that radiates a brightness amid distant talking.
Further along, “Urania” is full of blurry, ominous waves of dissonance, while “Return -A-” offers fuzzy static that segues into beeps amid a mesmerizing backdrop.
Nearing the end, “BMMF” is populated by dense and bleak layering that seems like it should soundtrack a horror movie, and “84 Lost” exits with a sampled mix of voices and atypical manipulation of synthetic versus organic.
An assembly of found sounds, samples and studio work, the tracks here range from 20 seconds to no more than 3 minutes, and each one is uniquely different, noisy and iconoclastically rhythmic.