Neel Phobos 2LP 2014 ambient drone electronic experimental MINT SEALED

	A$		25
	$		17

Neel Phobos 2LP 2014 ambient drone electronic experimental MINT SEALED

Original Austrian pressing on Spectrum Spools; possibly blue vinyl, not sure.

The great thing about science fiction is that you get to throw the rulebook out the window. In imagining an entirely new world, you can start from scratch, drawing on the immense promise of technology. As such, techno has always been science fiction, as has all music that stretches beyond the strictly human into the dark and uncertain world of space, robots and machines, with the purpose of contemplating our potential futures. As a producer and a mastering engineer, Giuseppe Tillieci is familiar with sounds of the imagination, lending his ears to some of the best-sounding, most original techno of recent years: he's put the finishing touches on records by Rabih Beaini (AKA Morphosis), Metasplice and Abdulla Rashim, and joined forces with Donato Dozzy for Voices From The Lake. Phobos, however, is the first time we've heard the Italian's expert sound design fully realised in a solo work.

If Voices From The Lake conjured the organic life forms of a subaquatic world, Phobos imagines an altogether different environment. Life here is reduced to steel and stone, a lunar landscape of ambient devastation. For almost an hour, there are few recognisable landmarks; no melodies, no beats. Instead, you have a section like "Travelling On Kepler Dorsum," where the arms of tiny robots skitter across the bare rock. The sounds of this world are totally alien—everything is unfamiliar, uncomfortable. There is no centre, no guiding light. A pervasive menace lingers, the dark side of Tillieci's imagination.

Phobos is loosely based on the moon from which it takes its name, which is drawing closer to Mars every year. Destruction for both approaches one metre at a time. It's this inevitable climax that brings Phobos to its subtly ecstatic conclusion, with the synths fighting their way through "Life On Laputa Regio" before the beautiful bass and coalescing half-melodies of "The Secret Revealed" finish the ruin of heavenly bodies. Rather than rage and violence, Tillieci's apocalyptic moment is marked by the warm peace of acceptance, a natural and expected end.

Tillieci's incredible ear for detail is what defines Phobos, and what keeps such a minimal record so consistently interesting. Listening to him play with density and texture, bringing elements into the light and then shrouding them in darkness again, makes every spin of the record unique. Nothing is unclear or out of place. The record builds through each section into one long piece, growing in depth and intensity. As with Voices From The Lake, this is an album to be absorbed in a single sitting—a rare example of the CD being perhaps a better option than the vinyl, if only so you don't have to get up to change sides. Phobos is an intensely focused and immaculately constructed record that reaches beyond this world in search of a new perspective on our earthly experience. The blank night sky is a wonderful vacuum for projection and, like all negative space, we yearn to fill it up, with stories, with colour, with sound—to see ourselves reflected. Like the best science fiction, Phobos gives us all the sky we need.      Published /     Mon / 10 Nov 2014     Words /     Ian Maleney

A            Post Landing

B1         Storm In Stickney      

B2         Crater Chain Observations   

B3         The Gravity Of Limtoc            

C            Travelling On Kepler Dorsum

D1         Life On Laputa Regio               

D2         The Secret Revealed

CONDITION:  MINT -- Factory sealed. Not sure if black or blue vinyl.