Sequence Two - Vinyle 180 Gr

Description

Light Conductor return with Sequence Two, the second album of slow-burning, prismatic analog synth instrumentals from the duo of Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes) and Stephen Ramsay (Young Galaxy). Expanding on the hypnagogic ambience of their warm, stripped-down 2019 debut, Jace and Stephen add subtle but shimmering structure and electricity to these four new longform pieces. The songs remain largely rhythm-less, yet burst and thrum with more florid and deliberate pulses and arpeggiators. Light Conductor’s analog palette of gently distorted drone chords, hypnotic ostinatos, and drifting levitational melodies continues to colour the glowing atmosphere of this radiant, trance-inducing, space-music-as-sunrise-on-another-planet, with a heightened ceremonial and conceptual dimension that is deeply satisfying. Working from recordings conducted by Stephen Ramsay in late 2019 and early 2020, made just before and after Light Conductor tours with Spencer Krug and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the duo then extracted and elaborated these soundscapes during the 2020-21 lockdown. With Sequence Two, the duo continues to convey an ineffable sense of meditative discovery and efflorescence, as if the music is being played and unfurling for the first time. The authenticity is strongly felt on these tracks derived from nocturnal marathon live sessions, marked by immersive telepathy and semi-improvisations. The duo's psychogenic jams are then judiciously embellished, usually with just one or two elements, though at moments there’s maximum accumulation – most notably at the close of the 14-minute opening track "Splitting Light", when an ever-repeating sequencer pattern evolves inexorably into a throbbing cadenza and interweaving multi-layered melodies, all culminating in a final explosion of guitar and space-rock choirs (the only voices on this instrumental album) that evoke both Yes, Spiritualized and Bon Iver.