MULTICAST DYNAMICS - Aquatic System

Having emerged just over a couple of years ago from the Dutch underground, Samuel Van Dijk has lost little time in reaching the ever-coveted ranks of the Denovali roster. The credit goes to a recipe that's more personal than unprecedented, a synthesis of a variety of experiences - from the most ambient and refined strands of techno to the stretched-out atmospheres of drone - that the young artist has tried his hand at in these first years of his career. Multicast Dynamics is specifically the latest in chronological order of his projects, and as such the most cohesive and all-encompassing.

As is customary, the German label has paired the reissue of the act's first offering, "Scape" (released last year on the ambient division of the local Kaukana Väijyy) with a brand-new work, namely this "Aquatic System". The usual supremely elegant artwork opens the door to a lush, dense work, whose main merit, however, is bringing a complex and articulated world like sound art to an intermediate stage, one that's easily accessible even to non-connoisseurs.

Diluted through the addition of frequencies and harmonic layering, the record nonetheless marks a decisive turn toward the immersive cosmos, via ten small essays in sonic landscaping. Water is, from the title onward, the absolute protagonist of the soundscape, and in the form of drops and chimes it accompanies the drones' narrative on the opening "Oriva", recurring throughout much of the record. The same pattern is indeed taken up again on the darker, deeper "Valta" and on the "resurfacing" of "Nebulous", where a few rays of moonlight find their way through the dark.

The whole record is conceived as a sonic tale of a series of dives at various depths. The icy microsound of the bare-bones "Amphibi" marks the contact with other forms of life and the disorientation of perception, while the sinister noise elements rising within the post-trancedelic current of "Sinua" announce the reaching of a first abyss. We're in the territory of the more aquatic side of Galati, but also of the sound design work of the latest Robert Henke, under the clear influence of the fathers of soundscape music – from Francisco López to Thomas Köner.

The meticulous research into sound design and the essentially monochrome palette that define the album don't stop occasional flashes of colour from suddenly emerging. It happens almost immediately in the vivid cascade of "Untila", graced by a cobalt-blue drone. And it happens even more often in the record's final stretch, where the evanescent "Vaihe" and the electrified "Vascular" surround and isolate the glacial "Tie", just a step away from the recent solo effort by Neel. Finally, the ambient-techno close of "Hiernamaals" draws a continuum with Dijk's past, bringing his sonic world back closer to the influence of Dadub and rounding off the picture of a work as Parnassian as it is (wonderfully) accessible.

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29/08/2015