It becomes a little more complicated when you zoom in…
The new long player from JPLS is a collection of complex, challenging compositions that beam in from the depths of the Minus universe. Fusing classic minimal techno with industrial electronica, he has created a brooding, deep-space opera that needs to be experienced in its epic entirety before individual aspects can be extracted to exploit their dancefloor potential.
All JPLS releases are dominated by an underlying concept, a self imposed set of values that are stretched to their logical limits and beyond. The Twilight EP set the tone, containing a set of tracks strictly conceived between the hours of three and five AM. Then there was the application of delay and overlays to create a ‘non standard’ harmonic content and defeat the machines on the Combination EP. This time round inspiration has been derived from theoretical physics, specifically the idea of sub-sub atomic movement and interaction and during the course of the album JPLS explores continuous creation, the transformation of sound into energy and the expanding and contracting reaches of space and time.
Emerging from a wash of dark, ambient drone the collection begins with Reset; a twelve and a half minute exercise in construction and deconstruction. The vast soundscape pulses with expectation before a host of mutated percussion starts scything it’s way across the stereo field, folding and shifting with splayed edges as the endless outro section burns all known bridges with reality. The electro-magnetism and gravitational pull of Zero Point creates more elegantly hewn glaciers of sound. Cold, distant and dangerous they slowly disintegrate into white noise, reforming in different spatial arrangements while the melody slowly transposes, doubles up and fractures into anti-melody. Displacement is probably the most familiar object in this electronic armoury. The kick is pounding and relentless, beating a path straight through the core of a spinning, turbulent vortex while the fragile hats rise and fall, etching-out icy trails of delay in the pitch-blackness. Basis then adopts a straighter, meditative structure modified by electrified percussion fills. It‘s a pure example of the cyclical processes at work throughout the LP as physical sounds vanish before reappearing in different forms, converting to energy and then back again.
If anything, the second part of the album offers even more in the way of experiment. The booming, broken electro of Fold twists the undulating bassline in on itself adding an additional layer of random harmonics to the spectrum before the shuffling triplets of Collapse introduces an alien-like voice treatment to the proceedings that snakes its way through the down tempo groove, inducing slow-burning hallucinations. Convolution then offers up a truly breath-taking moment, a perfectly executed marriage of stripped down beats and deep harmonic percussion programming that underlines the unique way JPLS approaches electronic composition. State rounds off the journey in a surge of light. Pulsating bleeps and gentle melodies descend from distant skies, drawing ever closer until they reveal themselves as giants; their residual energy leaving imprints that linger long after disintegration, and the listener bathing in the hot glow of radiation as the album loops perfectly, maintaining its cyclical nature by utilizing the same pads for the end as the beginning.
Track Listing:
1. Reset – 12:23
2. Zero-point – 7:16
3. Displacement – 6:39
4. Basis – 7:45
5. Fold – 5:43
6. Collapse – 9:15
7. Convolution – 10:10
8. State – 6:38
Release Date Digital: December 2nd, 2009
Release Date Physical: November 30th, 2009
