PsiloMine Sun - Fables (self-released)

If “Fall Back,” my first taste of Chicago’s PsiloMine Sun was a dark and drifting outing, “Fables” proves to be a more buoyant and beat-driven affair. That said, it still throbs with the same intensity and sonic weight as the previous single, it’s just that it seems to groove and grind along rather than float.

But, as I am finding out, PsiloMine Sun’s music is a complex affair. It is only when you start picking at the ends of the sonic threads, deconstructing the piece, and following the strands of music back to their source by isolating them from the finished sound that you realize what a byzantine and ornate sound is being created here.

On the one hand, the beats lend themselves to an avant-garde disco dirge, all gothic intent and shamanic mystique; on the other, there is a growing intensity created by the gradual inclusion of searing, industrial sonics. There are strands of electronic artistry and digital dexterity flitting around and filtering through analog sounds; there are psychedelic soundscapes woven through the groove, the cosmic glue that keeps everything from imploding under its own weight. And there are shards of sound and sonic art attacks, random inclusions, and off-kilter motifs providing moments of distracting, tangential, and beguiling beauty.

It is hard to find sonic reference points for such unique music, but the artists themselves cite not only Radiohead and Sigur Ros as sources of inspiration but, also the woefully overlooked Jon Hopkins, and that last citation makes me very happy indeed.

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