Reliq - Life Prismic [Noble Label]

Released on April 15th, 2k17 via the Japanese Noble Label is "Life Prismic", the third full-length artist album by Reliq since this side project of the producer otherwise known as Serph came to life back in 2011. Catering a menu of thirteen highly chromatic, colourful tunes we see Reliq present quite a diverse array of compositional efforts starting with the most playful opener "Glass'n'Beads" with its interplay of calm as well as buzzingly speedy sequences and uplifting, PostRave focused pianos whilst "Ceramic Samba" even weighs in extremely pitched vocals on top of a multilayered, polyrhythmic foundation and "Laputan" gravitates towards an electronic variation of Easy Listening / Exotica which comes across on a kind of novelty tip here. The story continues with more oriental flute vibes, pianos and electronics combined with Drill'n'Bass-references in "Morocco Drive", further into the album "Rain No More" provides a secret late night hit for advanced dancefloors, the "Cold Shuffle" is perfect fodder for all the IDM / Future Garage ravers out there and the "Voynich Soundscript" is as rich, complex and encrypted as its real life blueprint. And there we've come to a point that makes "Life Prismic" a tricky one because as fascinating, rich and well-produced its single tunes might be, listening to them in one session as an hour spanning body of work seems a little too overwhelming and therefore in parts even tiring to us as there's simply too much musical information going on to process, even for trained ears like ours. Which is a pity, kind of.