Geskia: Eclipse 323
flau

A generous EP with thirteen tracks (three of them remixes) spread across forty-three minutes, Geskia's Eclipse 323 improves upon the Tokyo-based producer's debut album Silent 77 by refining its psychedelic boom-bap style. Though the tracks are still as densely packed as before, the new material seems to possess a stronger sense of structural coherence and, as such, the wealth of detail doesn't undermine the tracks by splintering them into unrelated parts. That that doesn't happen can also be attributed to the hip-hop beats that form the foundation of most songs; without them in place, the material conceivably could collapse into fragments. In his ten originals, Geskia soaks synthetic keyboard melodies and beats in a glutinous bath of voice fragments, instrument samples, and digital dirt, resulting in settings teeming with detail. Though many cuts could be characterized as mutli-layered, glitch-laden instrumental head-nod of the melancholy persuasion (“Innerroots,” “Day Life Structure”), Geskia also makes room for an occasional sunkissed ambient setting (“Sunset Line Texture,” “Silhouetteque”).The future-funk tracks “Experimental Goddes” [sic] and “Inside Out Night” suggest affinities between Geskia and provocateurs such as Flying Lotus and Prefuse 73 (circa Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian). On the remix front, Bracken (Hood's Chris Adams) tightens up Geskia's sound even further in a deliciously bumping makeover of “Second Coming,” the outcome so fine one ponders what a fuller Geskia-Bracken collaboration might produce. Caural (Chocolate Industries) climbs aboard for a predictably polished handling of “Right Lights,” while London-based Lukid gives “3days Trial” a grime-coated treatment not unlike something one might hear from Flying Lotus. Whether their interests gravitates more towards Geskia or guest contributors, instrumental hip-hop devotees should find lots worth digging into here.

January 2010