Luke Abbott - Amphis
Norwich electronic producer returns with organic grooves of early Autobahn power. Hear it now.
LUKE ABBOTT'S debut album, Holkham Drones, was one of MOJO's Albums of 2010, a pastoral wash of kosmische electronica and deep pounding grooves that seemed imbued with the warming glow of bright summer afternoons. Well, in the wake of two EPs for Gold Panda's label, NOTOWN, the Norfolk producer is back with a follow-up LP, Wysing Forest, named after an Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire where the musician worked as an artist-in-residence during 2012.
“The record is mostly made up of live recordings,” explains Abbott. “Some were recorded at a performance at Wysing in front of a very small audience and some were recorded in a temporary studio I had set up during my residency... There was a large emphasis on improvisation during the whole process. A lot of what has ended up on the record was originally recorded as first takes or sketches of ideas.”
Influenced by Terry Riley, Team Doyobi and the spiritual jazz of Don Cherry and Alice Coltrane, Wysing Forest promises to be a more homemade affair than his 2010 debut, referencing the more organic, melodic aspects of electronic music, "a level of mastery over technology where it stops being a technical exercise and becomes a human performance.... where I can capture a moment and forget about the technology.”
To give you a taste of what that all means, here is a sneak preview in the form of epic 12-minute track Amphis, which moves from the Ralf Und Florian rattle of oscillator groans and thudding ARP rhythms to something more serene, pelagic and calming.
Wysing Forest is released on 23 June 2014 via Border Community.