Sines and Singularities – Aleph Zero

Holy fuck. Holy fuck on a pogo stick. Holy fuck on a pogo stick whistlin’ dixie all the live long day. This, ladies and germs, is an absolute masterpiece. Bluetech’s second album proper eclipses the first by a Goan mile; while still retaining the quality and microscopic / macroscopic feel, the sophistication here is unbelievable. Think deep, chic downtempo without any of the shanty-hammock vibes you might get elsewhere. There are some albums where you remember the first time you heard them for years to come. Shpongle 1, for example, I had just bought a bong and took the day off work to sit in the garden and… well, you know. Shpongle 2, I had a bunch of people over for pizza and to watch Blair win his second term in office. Haltya’s Forest Flavour I listened to, gobsmacked, in a bar in San Francisco one boozy afternoon. With Sines And Singularities, I’d had a shit week of too much work and not enough sleep. Friday evening: I killed the lights, slipped this in the deck, and drifted off on the music. And it was fucking sublime. Every moment of this album sounds like one to be cherished. We’re talking exquisite downtempo made up of sounds and textures that would be more associated with progressive house; you pick up influences of Trentemoller and almost Naked Music in there. Two remixes sit in the centre of the album, Shulman’s First Came The Stars and Pitch Black’s Ape To Angel. Both are sublime, and offer enough similarity so as not to sound out of place, yet have a certain something that distances them from Bluetech’s own tunes and provide a sort of sonic fulcrum in the middle of the CD. After which, we’re looking at one of the best half hour’s electronic music yet recorded, all culminating with the ecstatic, emotional Wilderness: with about seven ghost-melodies all fading in and out, there’s something addictively otherworldly going on here. After playing Sines and Singularities through for the first time, I honestly felt like getting up and giving it a standing ovation. It’s that kind of album. It gets your emotion-sensors twinkling like a million little candles. It reaffirms your faith in something. It feels like your ears are having tantric sex with your brain, and it stands up incredibly well to repeated listens: a week or so in, and I’m still getting new tickles of sub, new layers of smoothly-escalating beauty, new feelings coming out of the music. This is, without doubt, one of the finest albums that has ever come my way. No mistake and no messing, this is out there on its own.