Seimlste

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If you are looking for easy listening, predictable, unchallenging, unimposing, background glitch pop muzak, then, erm, you've not only come to the wrong place, you'll more likely end up with your ass kicked, your pockets emptied, a black eye and thrown back out the door you walked in.

San Francisco based Chris Douglas's latest album 'Seimstle' is a dark and brooding, ever-shifting digital landscape, filled with drifting polyrhymns and dense tones. Each track, barely named by a two character permutation, akin to an entry in the Periodic table, ripples like the formation of a base ore or mineral, the Creation of a sci-fi alien world destined to be controlled by machinery and barren of carbon based life forms. Even though very mechanical in it's sound and textures, the music always feels organic, like it's growing and expanding, enveloping you and pulling you in.
Upon each new listen you discover another layer, another whole story quietly playing out its purpose underneath the bubbling, mutating surface. Working somwhere in the same realm as Autchere's more recent output, and who have also asked Douglas to play ATP 2002, the music can be abrasive and confrontational, always cerebral and highly engaging. Like islands in the midst of a fog hazed sea voyage, warm and melodic elements drift in and out of focus on the horizon, yet never quite arriving nor bringing with them, your sense of comfort. The sense of otherworldly is astounding in it's depth, all encompassing in it's clarity. Take the time out to listen to this record properly, steal an hour and lose yourself. You won't regret it.

As a side note, this release has the most amazingly fitting artwork, granulated and lo-res bitmapped imagery, forming the barest crystalline structures, aluding to the configuration of a cityscape.