Cipher

A spiritual and thematic companion of sorts to PAN’s breathtaking ‘Mono No Aware’, this excellent artefact from highly promising Berlin/London collective, C.A.N.V.A.S revolves around curious new musics by Object Blue, Ben Vince, Flora Yin-Wong, Ashley Paul, Ausschuss, Xao, Michael Speers and others, an absorbing set that veers from new mutations of ambient-pop thru to electro-acoustic terraforming and expressive minimalism. The performance collective-turned-label’s 4th release surveys a broad range of ideas running the gamut from electro-ambient abstraction to percussive studies and wave songs, all underlined by a mutual, coherent search for novel sounds that question ideas of authorship in a shared pool of codified ideas and techniques. Where the label’s first two releases by project coordinators Olan Monk and Lugh O’Neill established sprawling vectors crossing ambient-pop, Actress-style greyscale iridescence, and dreamily disembodied voices, here they both play into a bigger, more complex picture, highlighting a wide spectrum of subterranean thought and composition within the context of electronic music.