Usher San - Osiris Module - KHΛOMΛИ - SD-118

Tempus Fugit - time is fleeing. Just as the remaining time until the turn of the year seems to be coming to an end in leaps and bounds and eludes our grasp, so does the new release on Spheredelic presents itself: trance-like and dream-like unreal.

Let's imagine the following situation in our mind's eye: We sit next to the crackling fire that illuminates the room of a medieval or early modern tavern and look into its centre, where a viola instrumental is being performed. So far the situation seems coherent, but the Bordun-like or quint-bass-like, sostenuto played viola is sonically complemented by the digital sigh, by the effect-drenched, treble-heavy snapping of a synthesizer. Much like these visually imagined fantasy images, Tempus Fugit, or at least its third track Jacob's Ladder, sounds similar on an auditory level.

Tempus Fugit is a complex, eclectic ambient-work by three musicians (Usher San, Osiris Module, KHΛOMΛИ), that interweaves various musical styles and integrates them into a hypnotic body of work that demonstratively resists the stylistic and even more the historical or cultural straightforwardness of the stylistic elements. The special thing about it is that the eclecticism of the EP, this use of different systems and their recomposition, is not merely one-dimensional, but rather multidimensionally anchored in the overall work itself. On the one hand, in the collaborative orientation of the project, which was created in cooperation with three artists, who sometimes contribute solo productions, sometimes duo or trio productions. What is striking here: As diverse as the various songs may sound, they all add up to a coherent body of work that lies somewhere between technoid, film score-like soundscapes (ΛRTEFΛKT) and organic instrumentals of various kinds (ARS_LONGA_VITA_BREVIS; QVOD_SVMVS_HOC_ERITIS), but even allows and successfully integrates small forays into the world of Levantine-inspired psychedelic rock (DIGITALINE) or post-punk/dark wave (SPECVLVM_MENTIS). 

This stylistic complexity, the oscillation between nuances of the most diverse epochs and cultural circles (such as the European Middle Ages, Arabic modern times and the digital age) constitutes the second dimension of our proclaimed eclecticism. And even in musical detail, this eclecticism can be found again. For example, in the rhythmic scheme, which sometimes appears polyrhythmic. Different tracks are layered on top of each other, the kick drum is running against the hypnotic sequencer sequence while a dynamically filtered dark ambient pad is wobbling in the background (LVPVS_NIGER), again rhythmically gradually shifted.

All these elements on Tempus Fugit create a finely differentiated, versatile web of sounds, noises and rhythms that is highly experimental in its musical realisation, but nevertheless juggles stringently and in multiple layers with associations of the most diverse cultural, historical and atmospheric backgrounds. Let yourself be carried away into an exciting world of non-linearity!

Usher San - Osiris Module - KHΛOMΛИ - SD-118 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.