Secretive synthesist Alexander Melzak puts wind behind trippers’ sails with the wide-eyed wonders and fantasy fanfare of his 2nd side for Light Sounds Dark - think JMJ, Tangerine Dream, Pye Corner Audio, Xvarr, Memotone.
One of scant few original Light Sounds Dark releases, ‘Substrates’ beds down among the label’s bootlegged gems of kosmiche, post-industrial, clandestine ambient and library music to bloom fantastical arrangements of arps and pads between their roots and branches. With fuck-all background info provided, one is encouraged to let the imagination run and freely conjure associations; is this the work of an unsung veteran, or some new age hydroponic botanist in the modern day? Either way it’s definitely one for the dreamers of the dream, a half hour of music rife with pineal sparkle and oneiric texture sure to stir the senses of psychonauts and synth romantics.
Like 2021’s eponymous introduction to Melzak, his follow-up also evinces a symbiosis between the poetic track titles and the music, which similarly balances the florid and classical with a subtle tonge-in-cheek wit and pathos that plays very sweetly on mind. In succinct staging the album unfolds from an iridescent castle-in-the-sky hallucination with Latin title ‘Igne Natura Renovator Integra’ surely recalling Pye Corner Audio at JMJ’s chateau studio, thru the ‘80s fantasy cue of ‘Xanthe Flees the Magisterium’, to what sounds like a Franco-Japanese animation soundtrack piece in ‘Natsuko’s First Mission’ and a breathtaking centrepiece of pitch-bent harmonic colours as soulful sashay on ‘A Coopers Hawk in Slow Dive’.
The 2nd half only wraps itself deeper in dream-textured beauty, transitioning from the lofty monologue and dry-iced elegance of ‘Lustrous, Burnished, Golden Spheres’ to the kosmiche exotica of ‘The Mychorizal Network is Talking to Us’, alive with psychedelic jazz-funk vamps and mushy lushness, to the stately, sustained piano chords and looped vocal of ‘The Last Paradigm’, and a beatific finishing move like 0PN channelling Alice Coltrane in ‘Strings that Connect Dimensions Vibrate, Emitting Sounds that Cascade Like Diamond Waterfalls.’
- Boomkat
Third eye-opening psychedelic fourth-world ambient visions from Alexander Melzak, returning to the infamous Light Sounds Dark label following his 2021 self-titled debut album for the imprint. Substrates is the sonic equivalent of drinking the psychoactive beverage Ayahuasca (DMT) in the jungle, shifting from intense darkness to transcendence and enlightenment. Let Melzak be your shamen.
- Norman Records
Alexander Melzak's new album, Substrates, showcases his mastery of electronic textures and ability to create stunning soundscapes and vivid sonic imagery. Melzak's unique sound highlights his distinctive and unconventional compositional style and gives rise to a record that feels both boldly escapist and richly imaginative. Substrates takes you on a real journey through otherworldly realms, blending unexpected moments with captivating, immersive sound design and spectacular sound design.
- Juno