Krystian Shek - Celestial Court - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

2018 . Krystian Shek released a number of superb and still underrated albums on Namlook's FAX imprint over the years; his first Carpe Sonum offering, 2014's Sometimes Not, was a bracing return to form, and al-Qahirah is the follow-up, and it's a dandy, a longform slice of far-flung ethnotronica that speaks within dub's mother tongue but jettisons the lockstep rhythmic underpinning. In so doing, Shek's augured quite a brilliant thing digidub that is all languid pools of sound, froth, reverberation, and echo, plunging the listener into a vast abyssal chamber whose sounds mimic the detritus found in long-abandoned sensory deprivation tanks. Yet the whole experience is becalming, welcoming, and thoroughly non-isolationist throughout the fifteen-minute excursion of the title track, we are treated to a rainbow coalition of thrillingly sculpted shimmers lighting up a desert night sky like some man-made aurora borealis. Shek's skill lies in his ability to showcase works of 'ambience' that are leagues removed from Eno's hoary old definition-this is a music of flares and fanfare, bursting with light, drunk on the absinthe of nature.

Krystian Shek - Love [COMPACT DISCS] date 09/30/2022

2019 . Krystian Shek's work is nothing if not eclectic. He's worked out his own mode of Namlookian 'environmental music' across previous Carpe Sonum discs, whether building towering edifices of stratospheric ambient or subtly shaking the foundations through an array of well-coifed beatstuffs. Navigating it's way through a sensuous variety of moods, his new one prides itself on establishing a beachhead of shimmering synthetic calm amidst a clutch of frothy, downtempo sequences. Shek's modus operandi here is restrained, tentative, almost dub-like, most pronounced in the delay-shimmer of the near four-minute InchThumbnailsInch, which, truth be told, could go on for another fourteen and never lose it's poised, artfully crafted power. Later on, the delightful, sweet bromides laced within InchCinnamon RollsInch does much of the same thing, walking a gauzy, late-winter reverb-sheen with all the elegance Mssrs. Yayga, Grad_U, and others of similar persuasion execute. In other words, another marvelously wrought Shek-attack of pearlescent electronica, buffed with a fine shammy and shining on like crazy diamonds.