seven

I have been listening to this somatic responses release for almost a month now, and I keep coming back to it again and again after every few days. every single time I find something that grabs my attention and I never seem to grow tired of this album.

in retrospect, looking over a vast number of somatics material we accumulated at "seven" in past few years, it appears to me that with each hymen release somatics assembles the "best of" for the past year. with all countless releases almost every month, the band is experimenting with different sounds and tracks, and then those ideas, polished, refined, transformed, and composed together are presented on a full-length release that seems to be spanning several shorter records.

both circumflex and augmented lines are "complete" releases, not only because of the amount of material presented, but also because they stand on their own as a solid body of work.

it would be wrong to compare "circumflex" and "augmented lines." I cannot really say which one is better, since I like both albums for many different things. "circumflex" was always dear to me for the combination of aggression and heaviness shaped in the form of dark unusual techstep and alien synthlines. with "augmented lines" it took me some time to fully get into the rich and complex world filled with layers and layers of percussion that leaves techstep far behind and spans genres like idm, rhythm&noise, drum&bass, etc. the result is simply unbelievable, and it is almost impossible to describe the multitude of emotions and sounds of this album in a short review.

just to mention a few things, I can see ant-zen influence rubbing off. for those of you anticipating somatics/celluloid mata split, you will be pleased to discover some of the raw percussion of the latter that found its way into this album. and even overall the sound of the album is a lot noisier, and colder; even more "industrial" than anything you have heard from the duo before.

on the other side, you will hear many intricate percussion layers weaving into the music, sparkling with disjointed, cut-up swirling beat textures, dazzling with their complexity. this is not your usual idm, it has been enhanced by the atmosphere (if not necessarily the sound) of heavy, broken techstep and twisted corroded drum&bass, and something else that is definitely somatics, not coming from any of the genres I know.

strings and softer atonal keys became more integral part of the music. the band is no longer playing on simple contrast of broken heavy percussion and distant strings - this time around it is a lot more complex and better orchestrated combination that goes beyond conventional idm or moody techstep.

at times the band enchants you with rolling intricate layers of percussion and gentle keys ("perfumed ammo") the next moment it comes down hard and crashes into the ground with pummeling rhythmic assault backed by corroded cold atmosphere and controlled feedback ("critical path"). the way all those different styles and atmospheres are perfectly combined on this record is simply stunning.

what amazes me, is how much material the brothers accumulated for this album, and how perfectly it all fits together. while hymen is probably one of the best labels in terms of releasing top-quality technoid material, this is probably the single largest and most impressive album (counting both the cd and the vinyl) the label released up to date. I have no doubt that "augmented lines" will become one of the milestones of the genre, and one of the most recognized and highly respected hymen releases.