With stress, anxiety and memes taking up ever more of our valuable mental real estate, it is little wonder that the visualisations, mantras and brain-tickling sounds offered by mindfulness and ASMR videos have gone mainstream in recent years. This debut solo album from Deerhunter drummer and co-founder Moses Archuleta – created in a period of turmoil and rediscovery, following the breakdown of his marriage – has much the same effect as listening to crackling static or laboriously chewing a grape.
In it, he seamlessly moulds techno, samples that float in and out of reach like leaves in a lake, and the odd art-pop flourish into soundscapes that undulate with the sense of powering down. Opener Playground hums with the reverberations of a church choir, while Nightmoves pulls you into its gelatinous minimalism, and Blue Ring offers 11 minutes of gentle yet highly textured experimentation with a Cluster/Eno riff and a swelling, gong bath-like close. Magic Killer boasts dark, Neon Indian-style keys, while closing track End of Heartache provides kitsch yet ambient dance-pop, slowly ushering you out of Archuleta’s meditative zone, blood pressure wonderfully stable.
