Ontayso: Abstract Serie No. 03
U-cover

Ontayso: Abstract Serie No. 04
U-cover

Amazing isn't it? Entire generations come into being between recordings by Kraftwerk and Portishead. Ontayso, on the other hand, seems to be trying to set some new record for the largest number of releases a single group can issue during its lifetime. Every month brings forth new Ontayso material, with each installment an additional part of what will one day be a massive totality. In this particular case, Koen Lybaert and Esther Santoyo have conceived of Abstract Serie as a ten-part project, suggesting that once all of the parts are available, the listener will be able to even more deeply plunge into the material's ambient dub-techno. Having already immersed him/herself in the opening two parts, the listener can do the same with numbers three and four, both of which are single-track, fifty-minute opuses.

In part three, immense swirling masses of vaporous washes and dubby chords drift slowly during the opening fifteen minutes, and then suddenly step aside for an even blurrier cloud to move in along with deeply buried pulsations. That second episode likewise drops out halfway through the journey to allow a synthetic wave to billow into a cyclonic blur. That windstorm blows so loudly, the tones patiently intoning within its become almost inaudible. Ontayso's signature atmospheric dub propulsion enters the picture at the forty-minute mark to nudge the now-brooding material gently towards its resolution. Picking up where three leaves off, number four intially meanders, as if pondering its next move, before gathering steam and preparing for lift-off. Two-thirds of the way along, a dreamy passage provides a soothing oasis before the pulse again picks up for an insistent dub-techno trek that eventually brings the recording home in a haze. As before, the releases' covers display Lybaert's abstract paintings, which can be seen in their entirety at the U-cover site. And wouldn't you know, he's as prolific a visual as he is a sound artist.

May 2010