Endurance: Echoic Architecture
Polar Seas Recordings

A natural fit for Brad Deschamps' Polar Seas imprint, Echoic Architecture presents an hour-long, cassette-issued set of refined ambient-drone productions by Joshua Stefane operating under the Endurance name. When not creating music or writing science-fiction, the one-time Kitchener, Ontario resident toils as a translator and researcher in Nara, Japan. Eight tracks are featured, some short and others long, the opening “Glass Towers” the longest at thirteen minutes. Though it softly shimmers in parts, the piece also smears its high-pitched, wavering tones with splashes of percussive colour and in so doing distances the material from ambient of the determinedly wallpaper-like type.

As might be expected when eight pieces are featured, contrasts emerge in dynamics and sound design from one track to another. By way of illustration, “Twilight Arcade” subsists at an almost subliminal level when its glimmering tones warble softly for eight minutes; “Automata,” on the other hand, imposes itself aggressively on the ear when showers of percussive clicks and whirrs appear alongside delicate keyboard figures. Introducing further contrast, the penultimate setting “Terminating Point” individuates itself from the others in threading an insistent rhythmic propulsion into its otherwise peaceful mise-en-scène.

August 2017