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The electronic instruments in the studio belonging to Polypores are just waiting for Stephen James Buckley to tell his story. Realizing music of the imagination, the laboratory conditions of this art have produced Hyperincandescent (43'54"). While thoroughly modern, the making of and listening to this marvelous music does still allow for an old-fashioned charm and wonderment. Its reverence for thinking, or because it is undertaken by a musician whose mind is so settled and fixed upon their work, Hyperincandescent will be heard as a unique form of expression - one where the mind has created something that it did not already know of. Pursued in multiple parts, each of this album's suites connect continuously across the span of an LP side. From drifting weightlessness to roiling tempest, this music feels like a journey through time, darkness and light. Discovering properties of sound, Buckley expresses well the play of atoms in the mind. Describing this work by its magnitude, volume, density, speed, energy, mass, duration and direction may help listeners recognize the intelligence at the other end of this musical message. But the truth of this release is found in its ability to magically transform our surroundings into an element to which we belong. In striking sonic swirls and upward scales the two tracks re-affirm the pleasures of Electronic Music - while further in chill currents descend downward past known forces. Notes combine as they collide. In such shades lush and tender their beauty feels electric. Sequencer patterns emerge amid machine modulations, and are soon swept toward a vista of synthesized chords. In bonding better to this voltage vision, the music gives full play to our fancy, and rises to new heights. There is a creative lifeblood circulating through Hyperincandescent. It is a music-to-think-about record - easier to enjoy when your mind is flexible and in a playful, pondering mood. In this open, neural neutral state we are most likely to find an order to these tones, and some meaning waiting for us within this most patient music.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 19 May 2022 |
