| Artist: Saul Stokes Album: LFOUFO Released: 5 July 2014 |   |
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Saul Stokes and his music just keep getting better. With each new album Stokes becomes more confident, more himself, yet retains an incomparable penchant for discovering new frontiers of sound, atmosphere and texture. His mega-download LFOUFO (83'55") has something for everyone: bright timbres, negative space, sleeping drones, jubilant beats and scribble leads - which all amounts to another wildly imaginative sonic stunner. At the outset of each project Stokes first asks himself some questions about audio display, not about what key to play in but what new sound to invent. He imagines something then designs and builds an instrument which will bring his idea into the world - only to discover through the process things even further out. Utilizing his custom built synths, iPad apps, samplers and hardware synthesizers on LFOUFO Stokes realizes eight tracks of buzzing, bubbling bytes of colorific tone and expeditionary zeal. From electro-idyll to tempestuous brainstorms of sound these tracks ripple with muscle beneath a unique thermonuclear fragility, then wind down to a distant night march of cool moonshadows. And the dark may be the best place to listen to LFOUFO as this electric music glows and flows so well against the velvet black of night. Stokes does indeed manage to push some dark electrons into less vibrant spaces - and the introspective moods they bring, but the majority of LFOUFO is built on the cumulative power of simple, minimalist riffs which allows for a gradual unfolding of beautiful details. Saul Stokes is attached to the future and with each new musical effort he undertakes brings us closer to it. We may not know what this man does for a living, but we do know what he does to live... he remains Saul Stokes, harnessing the power of electricity in service to music.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 17 July 2014 | |
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