- See all the Ratings
- Add my Rating now
(Merck/Couchblip!)
Sinking is the first album released through Miami electronic music label Merck by Minneapolis-based artist and producer Mr Projectile. Prior to the release of this latest album, Mr Projectile’s previous releases on labels such as Toytronic and Music Aus Strom have generally explored melodic IDM breakbeat textures, with a focus on clean, crisp and almost glacial production. For ‘Sinking’ though, he’s instead moved his attention onto assembling slivers of vocal samples alongside reconstructed live instruments and sparkling breakbeats, with an aesthetic sensibility that seems to draw as much from classical composition as it does contemporary electronics.
‘You Need’ opens this album with an ethereal wash of ambience that slowly resolves itself into clicking and ripping timestretched IDM beats overlaid with delayed-out angelic female vocals that almost call to mind Kirsty Hawkshaw (of Opus 3 ambient house fame) or The Beloved. ‘Underneath the Evening’ fades into vision slowly with echoing ringing tones and washes of synth ambience, while ‘Resistance Is Fertile’ is constructed around a cycling melodic loop that’s almost gamelan-like, under which moody synth washes, clicking beats and what sounds like real bass guitar trace a moody atmospheric groove.
‘Acting Right’ treads similar territory to Plaid, with chromatic scales that almost sound like they’re taken from classical arrangements over manically ticking and stuttering glitch-beats, and ‘I Am Back’ carries echoes of drone-electronica / post-rock artist Dntel during its intro before Boards of Canada-esque plangent tones and whirring synths carry it down a downtempo beat avenue.
‘Slow Rewards’ is perhaps the most darkly-tinged and ominous track here, and is underpinned by tense hiphop inspired beats and chiming flanged tones, while ‘Sinking’ reintroduces heavily phased My Bloody Valentine-style female vocals over soothing bass tones and cycling skeletal beats, and evokes an atmosphere of classic 4AD shoegazer-era bands as much as it does IDM ambience. ‘The Inevitable Haunting’ echoes in slowly with what sounds like backwards heavily distorted piano tones laid alongside glacial synths, before closing track ‘Love Here’ takes things to an atmospheric close with more phased female vocals, plucked bass chords and clicking beats built around a central core of constantly shifting rhythmic elements that calls to mind the likes of Funkstorung.
Sinking is easily one of the more immediately accessible releases that I’ve heard so far from the Merck camp, and its idyllic ambience and sense of almost somnambulistic grace is pretty much at odds with the some of the immediate associations brought up by Mr Projectile’s rather ballistics-oriented nom de plume. Enveloping and melodic with an exquisite level of attention to sonic detail, ‘Sinking’ is made with your headphones in mind – if melodic and ambient sonics lush enough to soothe your tired head while also stimulating your neurons sounds good, Mr Projectile’s latest offering is well worth seeking out.
Recommended for fans of Boards of Canada, Clue To Kalo, Plaid
Check out: www.m3rck.net and www.couchblip.com
