Philippe Petit - Descent Into The Maelstrom [Opa Loka Records]

Put on the circuit via the ever thriving label that is Opa Loka Records is Philippe Petit's "Descent Into The Maelstrom", an album inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe novel of the same name. Produced and performed on the elusive Buchla Easel synthesizer we see the three tracks spread out over 48 minutes total providing a thrilling journey into the very depths of modular synthesis, opening with "Descent", a dark, yet partly also tongue in cheek ride through the buzzing, intense, oftentimes warped realm of pure spaced out modular synthesis whereas the relatively short "..." - yes, this is the tracks title! - deals with a clean, minimalistic array of retrofuturist computational bleeps in combination with actual, comprehensible melodic structures of raw, slightly alien but still well familiar, and somehow cute, nature which makes this our favorite track of this longplay piece. Furthermore the final cut, the 21 minutes spanning "Into The Maelstrom" even introduces abstract, glitched out beat structures alongside spatial bleeps, brooding low frequency shifts and an overall, highly reverberating sound aesthetic which, in combination with massively twisted repetitions of tonal sequences and a piercing electrical buzz, comes across as a well threatening affair, heralding unknown dangers from outer dimensions and unexplored regions of the non-visible cosmic consciousness. Intense and demanding, this.

Album artwork on Instagram!