Cepia: Atlantic Blood
Sublight

Fans of Cepia's Ghostly EPs Dowry and Pearl will have to wait a little bit longer for his full-length debut: though an album in track number (actually more a mini-album at 31 minutes), Huntley Miller's Atlantic Blood mixes three originals with six remixes, often making it seem more a compilation with Cepia (pronounced 'SEP-ee-uh') contributions the unifying factor. The album's most encouraging aspect is that the three originals are perhaps its strongest material which therefore makes his eventual full-length coming-out all the more enticing. Opener “Atlantic Blood” is suitably oceanic (though the water temperature is more a warm bath than the frigid cold of the lower depths) and also one of the loveliest electronic pieces heard in recent days. Cepia clothes a sing-song melody in muffled granular garb during “574” and lifts the vaporous cloud “Arount” up to the heavens.

Miller typically imbues the remix material with a stately dreaminess and intensifies its machine dimension, regardless of the originals' stylistic contrasts. On the sweeter tip, Miles Tilmann's “I've Already Forgotten” glistens beatifically while the (untitled) Tiki Obmar overhaul sweetly blossoms into a mass of shimmering tones, garbled voices, and machine ripples. Cepia adds a faded electro-ambiance to the propulsive remix of Mr. Projectile's “You Need” and rides a smeared funk-hop groove under a melancholy, child-like vibes figure in Dosh's “Naoise.” The most unusual of the lot, Fog's “Can You Believe It?” embeds vocals in a creaking, carnivalesque haze. Whether originals or remixes, it's all ultra-refined and exquisitely rendered. Now about that full-length…

July 2006