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Resubmergency

by Alex Crispin

supported by
Farold Haltermeyer
Farold Haltermeyer thumbnail
Farold Haltermeyer Wow. A Blade Runner-esque ambient masterpiece. Alex has reworked the Vangelis touchstones with a perfect nuance of refreshing and calming. We put this on whilst deep-diving some of Joe Hollick's work and connections and 10 minutes later found that everyone in the room had fully tripped out into inner thought spaces...VERY powerful stuff. Dose with caution :) but enjoy where this fantastical creation takes you. Thanks Alex, really something very special Favorite track: Green Ember.
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1.
2.
Guide Blind 13:08
3.
Green Ember 05:45
4.
Idle Worship 07:48
5.
Canopy Dance 05:38
6.
7.
8.
9.
Ohko 04:11
10.
Pharoah 04:44
11.
Rosewater 05:06
12.
Cleater 04:34
13.
St. Stephens 04:10
14.
Decress 09:52
15.
16.
Silvered 10:35
17.
Kwar 05:22
18.
Norse 06:11
19.
Reech 08:26
20.

about

The magic of Alex Crispin’s music lies in the way he can pull apart different elements and re-work them in a way that feels beautifully organic. The shorthand description for the Norwich-based composer and artist’s material sits somewhere between ambient and drone, but the meditative surface level of his work is placed atop a stunning depth where pieces are put together like 3D puzzles.

“The idea of making some ambient in my mind is something flippant and 'easy' but every time reveals itself to be a long and gestational process” Crispin says. “This may be because of the genre's inherent cathartic nature, but I will essentially 'finish' each track at least once, before completely reworking it to another type of finished. At the heart of it I think is the need for the music to become somewhat unrecognisable to me, in terms of its origin, to be 'acceptably' transportive and therefore finally complete.”

This ongoing refinement is pulled into sharp focus on his new triple-album set. A collection of work that takes in his 2017 debut LP 'Idle Worship' and its Constellation Tatsu-released follow-up 'Open Submission', it also features new work in the form of 'Resubmergency'. Putting each next to another creates a narrative arc to the artist’s creative evolution, each album a further erosion of his sound palette until it runs like sand through fingers. Like Oneohtrix Point Never’s 'Rifts' – which pulled together his earlier albums under one umbrella – Crispin saw a chance to draw his own line in the sand.

“I listened back to the three albums as a whole I was mildly surprised at how consistent they are, despite being created within a five-year period” he says. Crispin is a prolific worker – he’s currently working on a more song-driven solo record and is also a member of Brighton-based progressive rock band Diagonal – and given the rapid changes of style he employs elsewhere, it certainly struck out as an anomaly in his catalogue.

'Idle Worship' reclaims the term New Age from the tired old cliches the genre has carried around with it. Crispin works across various keyboards and guitars, intertwining electronic and acoustic elements to create spectral melodies. Sometimes, as on 'Green Ember', he lets these hooks hang in the air, drifting amidst the vast space he’s created for them. Elsewhere, such as 'Canopy Dance’s' earthy mix of phased synths and delicately propulsive percussive elements, they’re allowed to be livelier. It’s a record that sees Crispin carefully testing the limits of these soundscapes, working out how much he can push without losing the sense of minimalism in the music.

On 2018’s 'Open Submission', Crispin applies this gentle tension further. There are bolder sounds at play – the sunset ambience of the opening title track is interjected with chiming guitars that pivot around its ebb and flow; on 'St. Stephen’s' meanwhile he introduces a pipe organ, which adds an alkaline edge to the track’s hazy psychedelia. 'Open Submission' is a much shorter record than its predecessor at less than half an hour, but there’s no forced urgency here, no sense of having to move things on before they’re ready to progress.

“The approach for me is always pretty similar” Crispin says “They are often such daunting monolithic pieces that it’s not surprising that they take such graft to really stack up as the mountains they are. The process often starts with an improvised linear track, which is then mashed or melted into a drone - and then played over and over again until I’m happy.”

That process is arguably at its most focused yet on 'Resubmergency'. Whereas the previous two albums have a certain earthiness to them, on the seven tracks here there’s a real search for the cosmos, a star-gazing look out into the heavens and a projection of gaping space. There are echoes of both 'Idle Worship' and 'Open Submission' in the album; washes of sound are offset by something a little more restless - such as on 'Silvered' where a looped vocal occasionally appears above the rest of the track like a buoy bobbing amongst waves – and Crispin again is careful not to forsake delicacy in the pursuit of scale. These tracks sound huge and yet poised, simple changes can yield huge shifts in mood – on 'Reech', for example, the equilibrium of the track’s meditative hum is pulled upwards by an unfurling synth line, disrupting the stasis with tension.

“I associate ambient/drone with landscape and place much more so than a sense of personality or narrative” Crispin says. “It's so transcendent and formless that it feels more like viewing the world from a great height, or great depth. Like taking your cues from the centre of the earth or way way out into space where everything is on a different timeline.”

That sense is felt keenly on 'Resubmergency', a startling piece of work that whittles down its creator’s process to its most minimal, in order to create a sense of something truly vast.

credits

released November 5, 2021

Tracks 1 to 7 originally released on 'Idle Worship' (2017)
via Sounds of the Dawn
Tracks 8 to 13 originally released on 'Open Submission' (2018)
via Constellation Tatsu

Rhodes Piano, Voice, Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Korg Prologue 8, Elektron Digitone, Micromonsta 2

Mastered by Chihei Hatakeyama

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Alex Crispin Norwich, UK

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