X Or Size

(This article’s English version was produced with AI-assisted translation)

“All Avail” dangerously approaches what we could define as a bad trip. Whether this is a strength or a flaw depends on the perspective: perhaps it’s both. The formula is: a sound collage of distorted voices and percussion, enriched with filters, echoes, and acoustic spaces that emerge, blend, and then vanish; this cascade of samples is laid on a soft carpet of dark bass and rumbles, or rather, what’s left of a kick drum, perceivable only in its deep frequencies. The result is a sanctuary of psychedelic mutations, between laments and tribal impulses, all depicted like cave paintings under LSD, in a legacy that, although crudely labelable as ambient-dub, is closer to “Island Diamonds” by Pocahaunted than to the latest cybernetic explorations of Xenia Reaper and Alpo.

The six jams unfold over more than forty minutes, exalting incoherencies and archaic elements. It’s not in the order of things that X Or Size, the project of American Josiah Wolfson (previously a collaborator with Sean McCann in the drone duo The Geese), finds its essence. Rather, it’s in the chaos, the lack of structure, loops, and the surrender to uncontrollable events; the electronic instruments are bent to a shamanic ritual, rather than to a clean and refined sound design. The sense of these hallucinatory journeys reaches its peak in “Ceremonism”, where a whirlwind of vocal samples descends furiously upon percussion and horns, all chopped up, repeated, distorted, and reduced to dimensions that seem accessible only through heavy doses of psychedelics: it’s like Huerco S in a state of depersonalization, a Madteo stripped of his soul.

Disorder is the cornerstone that structures the work, but it’s also a double-edged sword, creating moments of excessive prolixity, a fragmented logorrhea, a distorted babble that inevitably reduces attention, only to then pick up the thread and restore a meaning, subtle but tangible (“Lathe D’Just”). It’s a work that constantly oscillates between disorientation and mystical fervor, between confusion and anarcho-primitivism (“Osso”), and only in the final title track does it seem to find a balance, the end of a hallucinatory hysteria, where low-resolution crackles accompany an astral drone, the dreamy glow of a distant star. Perhaps it won’t be the most coherent record of the year, but who cares, after all?

09/03/2025