Phoenecia - Demissions

There was a break of nearly a decade between this band's debut and their latest two albums. This isn't the same band even though the name is still Phoenecia, a change took place with last year's superb 'Echelon Mall' and 'Demissions' continues in this vein. The rhythmic pyrotechnics of 'Brownout' remain shelved and all emphasis has been shifted to textures and tonality. You'd be forgiven for doing a double take to be sure that this is indeed the same pair of guys, the IDM crowd won't be enjoying what has been done this time out in much the same way they didn't like Phoenecia's return in 2010. Things break down routinely in this musical world, they come to strange combinations of electronics and bizarre atmospherics. Simply put, this album is a synth junkies wet dream, the sheer volume of keyboard usage is almost deafening. Layers upon layers upon layers and then some more just for good measure. What beats do get supplied appear to function mostly as accents to the astonishing evolution of synthetic excursions present on 'Demissions'.

People may or may not come to embrace what's going on here, for me it's like watching Goya try to paint over graph paper; the balance of acoustic and chemically engineered instruments on this record confound and puzzle me the more I listen to it. Easy answers are not forthcoming, I wonder how they knew each piece was finished because these works sound anything but set in stone to me. Phonecia have somehow crossed the line between technology and organic methodology seamlessly, they often go back across this border only to return as if to say: here's what we've found, we'll leave the interpretations up to you. I do have to stress yet again what a remarkable journey of mathematical manipulation you're going to encounter via 'Demissions'. The twilight hours surely were made for this kind of material, it's what you put on after the workday is done and you want to be elsewhere, if only for the duration of this album. The richly elegant levels of detail echoing further and further into your mind, microscopically precise compositions which run the longest mile for the sheer pleasure of it. Nobody else will.

I found this release once again, by total accident, it has apparently been out since March which makes it all the more intriguing that they have elected to continue under this moniker for a bit longer. The most curious facet to what they've released is how far it is from the days when Warp took an interest in them but just as quickly lost it, I can not say enough about what a strangely rendered world they depict through their abilities. Only the barest of sounds play out during some moments of this opus, everything tails off into almost total silence, then near psychedelia beckons many times but never fully emerges as it's buried beneath the complex patterns of color, light and sound. An ever expanding lotus bloom quietly replicating in the dark, two men compelled by vision and known less and less as time goes by. A very odd job, indeed. Oct 24 2011