What a gem of electro-acousticness David Knight and Stephen Thrower have created for their second UnicaZürn release on the Touch label.
The weeviling warmth of the orchestration on the first track is erased by a Steve Reichian slip, snipping signatures ripped through with corkscrewing curls, tapering manatees full of planetary perfume and starry savannahs. A layered weave which dances your head with discovery, the curious abstraction of the second track (“Into Burning Labyrinth”) roasted over an aviary of Islamic reeds. This insistent pulse stoking its centre as tethered circulars tendril off to a cacophony then tidal comedown.
The devil’s certainly in the detail as the visual vibrations of the inverted apple tree art linger to the album’s pencilled erosions, the bruised blush of harmonics leaking through the funnelling loopage of “Stems Of The Shadowmind”, nebulously needled in dilatory exhales. Beautiful vibes reminiscent of Transpandorem’s drifting contours lounging here in the slow and even recoils of the occasional bass chord, Thrower’s saxophone slipping sinuously into the creeping multiples and choral curves. These delectables are snatched away in an acidic outro of Temporal Bends-type mischief detaching the listener from complacency. The mechanical rub texturing the infinite mirrored surface of “A Gulp of Moss, A Breath of Stone” is an oscillatory pleasure psychedelically shifting with dark seductive details that drag you within its transformative fibre. A helix skating accelerating as this ominous yarn cloisters, dirgeful, full of jewelled serpents slithering into the caw-caws of Avebury crows , an illusion generated by FX-blighted vocals that dissipate its eventual demise.Now this is where Sensudestricto ends, but if you purchase your wax via the label, you are rewarded with an eight-minute download bonus, a chilled-out nugget called “Frozen Scars And Laudanum”, where the electrics nestle this gorgeous Henryk Górecki-esque slip’n’slide, as the bending verdigris of the Northern Lights are candled in its inky iridescence.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
