One Eye Wanders - Glimpse/Recoil

Littered with references and name drops on this site (Usually courtesy of Peter Marks), and allusioned to in the review of 'Old School Electrology Vol. 1' (in which they provide an exclusive track, 'Misdiagnosis'), "One Eye Wanders" are an act which the sharper of you will recognise.

Formed by N Copernicus (who himself was active a decade earlier under the name "0Dark : 30"), One Eye Wanders is traditionally intricate Electro-Industrial, meeting the soundscapes that modern acts such as Acretongue deliver without pardon, coupling them with post-ambient infused IDM, and painting a landscape ever so intricate.

'Dead Centre' takes the technical mastery that you'll find with acts such as Haujobb, and weaves layer upon layer of sound, generating the most impossible results. It's IDM, for the most part, but it's resonating on far, far too high a plateau to possibly be textbooked with a simple word. If you combined Acretongue's "Strange Cargo" with Die Sektor's "Applied Structure In a Void", and added Haujobb's eccentricities, you'd be about halfway to describing the genius of One Eye Wanders, and at that point, you'd pass out through exasperation.

There's a reason why this album, originally released in 50 copies, has become a cult work of great demand. I can spend months dissecting this at its core, and walk away bemused as to how the composition was imagined.

'Eternite' is a track with a very, very difficult job - after such a thrilling and genre-breaking intro, no track wants to be tasked with following it. There's very few mistakes made in doing so, this is heavier on samples and utilization of the voice ('vocals' would not be an appropriate term here), but even more interestingly is the difference from 'Dead Centre' - this has choral sections, far more diversity, and almost introduces an entire different posture for IDM, yet it retains all of the myth and fertility that the opener had.

Most critics will testify that when a band reaches such a threshold of unprecedented talent (understated by the reminder that this is a debut release by a solo artist), then the foundations are set, and there's very little that can be done to prevent the act from leaping across the miasma, into 'legendary' status.

With One Eye Wanders, I honestly find it difficult to pick a weakness. Maybe Six tracks makes for far, far too short a CD, but for something so sweet and delicious, it's easy to over indulge.
"Wreck/Circuit" features some beautiful rhythms, "Glimpse" is subdued but ethereal in it's appearance featuring oriental strings and instrumentation, and "Hannya" and "Glass Mask" play out the ending of this journey like a child, innocently waving goodbye through hopeful eyes.
One Eye Wanders will be coming home, and I can assure you all, through absolutely no over exaggeration, that the next release will stun the scene.

I swear to god, I could go outside, right now, and shake the snow of of the trees, and this release would still stand up as being more overwhelming.

As close to a 10 as possible. Feb 11 2012