textura

Albums
Antonymes
Christopher Bailey
Big Eyes Family Players
Causa Sui
Celer
The Declining Winter
Dikeman/Lisle/Serries...
Douwe Eisenga
Empirical
EUS
Finnissy & Norsworthy
Ikeda + Hatakeyama
Invading Pleasures
ironomi
Jaeger / Mathieu / Rabelais
Sverre Knut Johansen
Kastning & Clements
Kastning & Wingfield
Kodian Trio
Kubisch & Güther
Tanner Menard
Mikal
Nuel
Craig Padilla
Post-Haste Reed Duo
Pugs & Crows & T. Wilson
rhein_strom
Steve Roach
SiJ & Textere Oris
Andreas Söderström
Solar Bears
Nicklas Sørensen
Tassos Spiliotopoulos
Strategy
subtractiveLAD
Taavi Tulev
Western Skies Motel
Erik Wollo
Waclaw Zimpel

Compilations / Mixes / Remixes / Reissues
Ricardo Donoso
VA 002
La Monte Young & Zazeela

EPs / Cassettes / DVDs / Mini-Albums / Singles
Battery
KUF
My Autumn Empire
Lasse-Marc Riek
Soulful Nature

EUS: Luminar
SOFT

In keeping with the ambient-drone concept, most recordings associated with the genre could be described as restrained, peaceful, subliminal, and becalmed; rare indeed is the recording that eschews all such gentility for something verging on noise, and when one such as Luminar surfaces that does so it's hard not to sit up and take notice. Issued on the France-based ambient label SOFT, Luminar is the brainchild of Costa Rican producer Jose Acuna operating under the EUS alias. Cellist Oliver Barrett, violinist Nik Koniwzski, and vocalist Ana Mariela also take part, though you might have to strain to hear their contributions within the all-consuming maelstrom unleashed by Acuna.

Twelve indexed and titled tracks compose Luminar, but it unfolds as an uninterrupted long-form work of scene-changing character, and the epic character of the musical material is complemented by a cover illustration that's similarly primeval. Epic organ, strings, and synthesizer flourishes lends the overture “Abrir, Soltar” a grandiose, even bombastic character that will remain in place for much of the recording. That opener segues without pause into “Lidea,” a spectacularly loud dronescape within whose vortex muffled wails and string tones are faintly glimpsed. Acuna's material churns thereafter at an ear-splitting pitch, so much so that one imagines one's speaker system would beg for mercy could it do so. Still, the melancholy “Velo” shows that Luminar isn't without an occasional restrained moment, but it's definitely the exception to the rule.

Field recordings of planes and other noise appear to have been woven into the sound design, though it's difficult to be sure when the elements are stirred together to form a singular, energy-charged behemoth. Elements do occasionally separate themselves from the mass—the repeated bass drops in “Aleth,” thudding bass accents in “Ficciones,” acoustic piano in “Velo,” and arcing strings in “Luminar II,” to name a small number of examples—but generally one experiences the album's sound design as a roaring whole more than constituent parts. Had Acuna's fifty-minute recording been available to Kubrick when he was creating 2001: A Space Odyssey, one imagines he might well have used parts of Luminar as the soundtrack to the mind-melting sequence late in the film where astronaut Dave Bowman hurtles across vast stretches of space in his EVA pod.

March 2016