Articles
2009 Artists' Picks
Lymbyc Systym

Albums
Cory Allen
aus
The Bird Ensemble
Canaille
Catlin & Machinefabriek
Greg Davis
Loren Dent
Dirac
Drafted By Minotaurs
Flica
Sarah Goldfarb & JHK
Gown
John Hollenbeck
Viviane Houle
I/DEX
Akira Kosemura
Andrew McKenna Lee
Le Lendemain
LRAD
Lymbyc Systym
Melorman
Muskox
The Mercury Program
Nikasaya
Northerner
nörz
Noveller / Aidan Baker
Redshape
Marina Rosenfeld
Stripmall Architecture
Sturqen
Wes Willenbring
The Tony Wilson Sextet
Julia Wolfe
Peter Wright
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Blackoperator
Glimpse Four:Twenty 03
Kod.eX
Portland Stories

EPs
Molnbär Av John
Tommi Bass & B.B.S.C.
Julian Beau
Colours-Volume 5
Dalot
Echologist
Simon James French
Geiom & Shortstuff
General Elektriks
Geskia
Ernest Gonzales
Gradient
Jacksonville
Joker
Ann Laplantine
Loko
Machinefabriek
Stefano Pilia
Damian Valles

I/DEX: Layers
Lagunamuch

All the way from the industrial city of Novopolotsk, Belorussia comes this deep ambient excursion by I/DEX, otherwise known as musician and audio-designer Vitaly Harmash. On his follow-up to 2003's Seqsextend (Nexsound), Harmash presents nine indexed settings that flow continuously into another, resulting in a fifty-one-minute recording of gentle electronic undulations and percolations. Anything but harsh, Layers inhabits the warm end of the digital music spectrum, a zone where pitter-pattering rhythms and glitchy streams of flickering melodic fragments bask in the electronic sunshine. The material turns Oval-like in “Altal” when lapping clicks collide with cloudstorms of glistening tones, and then grows rhythmically insistent during “Cene” in a way that suggests some tangential connection to Raster-Noton. A digi-dub dimension emerges when “Illude” adds vaporous smears to its palette, while “Antens” pushes I/DEX's sound to an even more ravishing level of intensity. Abundant in mico-detail, Harmash's densely layered yet tranquil material exudes a humane feel that belies its computer-generated origins (analogue synthesizers, radio, guitars, and field recordings are also used to generate his tracks). While listening to the album, one pictures summery landscapes filled with insect swarms and country ponds teeming with tiny organisms darting across the waters' calm surfaces.

January 2010