Benjamin Finger: Motion Reverse
Shimmering Moods Records

2015 is shaping up to be an especially productive year for Benjamin Finger with as many as six(!) albums scheduled to appear. With the April release of the ambient collection Pleasurably Lost (Eilean Records) now a matter of historical record, Finger turns his attention to Motion Reverse, a fifty-minute set issued on Shimmering Moods Records.

The playfulness that oft characterizes Finger's work is evident throughout, nowhere more so than in the opening track, “Vocal Limited,” which mutates an insistently thrumming vocal sample into all manner of weird warble and squeal. The pulsations of that introductory setting carry on into “Frontal Waves” and “Dubstore Light” albeit in more elaborate form, with the now rhythmically driven soundworld opening up to include ghost-like vocals cooing serenely in the background and rapidly flickering 4/4 beats drenched in dubby reverb.

A prototypical Benjamin Finger production, “Childish Tape” embeds mangled samples of a child's voice within a dizzily looping assemblage of tinkles, processed effects, and melodic fragments, the sum-total of which suggests a severely tripped-out Boards Of Canada collage as much as one by Finger. The multi-layered burble of “Sunny Echoes,” on the other hand, harks back to the kind of electronic material issued on Skam and others of its kind.

Not everything Finger touches turns into hyperactive frazzle. Though a far share of bluster is present, “Spacecore Dust” (said to be an Autechre tribute) generally follows a straightforward course, its propulsive movement ornamented with synthetic whooshes and treatments, while “Dream Logic” takes the listener out on immense waves of synth washes.

Much as they have on past releases, Finger's animated Motion Reverse creations resemble lab-produced organisms brought into being by an obsessive alchemist whose relentless experimenting has kept him up for days. For reasons known only to him, dub—more in terms of production sensibility than formal style—plays a central role, with many of the recording's incessantly percolating tracks rooted in dub.

June 2015