This album is immense. There, I said it. You don’t need to read any further if you’re looking for a recommendation. Just go and buy this, immediately.
Words: Will Jobbins
Still here? Want to know why I rate this so highly? Well, there are electronic music artists who stick to the genres, there are artists who create new genres and there are a very small minority who are able to render such quaint ideas as pigeon-holing completely irrelevant. I’m talking about artists such as the Future Sound Of London, Shpongle and now the Nagual Sound Experiment too.
The man behind the Nagual Sound Experiment, Cameron Leonard-Schroff, is perhaps more widely known for his pioneering and highly acclaimed work in the psybreaks subgenre as Mood Deluxe, where he programs powerful, high speed psychedelic breakbeats, but his downtempo work as NSE is on another level altogether.
Borrowing half-time rhythms, throbbing sub-bass devices and drum sounds from the dark, brooding world of dubstep, Cameron builds on these lazy beats with rich psychedelic bites of sound. From the dub-like Zorastafari which features horn samples and reggae vocals through the haunting low frequency Anti Spiral and the dark and distorted Black Lodge Dub, Invisible Movements is beautifully rich in aural texture and sonic complexity, and has a tangible undercurrent of barely-concealed menace which occasionally erupts in a storm of rattling rimshots, drum n’ bass style fills, rhythmic glitches and phasing bass frequencies that vibrate your teeth.
It is an exercise in post-apocalyptic psy-dub which, while not as dark or openly aggressive as most pure dubstep, certainly isn’t always a cheerful listen. The last track for example, Hexorcism, will leave you feeling decidedly uncomfortable as an almost trance-like crescendo rises and falls over a disjointed, shuffling dubstep rhythm and unearthly distorted vocals.
At times sounding almost like traditional dub and at others disturbing and haunting, Invisible Movements is a highly atmospheric achievement which transcends genres, and it has been right up there on the ‘Most Played’ list on my iPod for some time.
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