- One of the most persistent themes in the ongoing revival of garage is an obsession with the melancholic. It's an effect that's either usually incongruous or just ham-fisted (and certainly takes a lot of cues from the old master Burial), but when it's done well it can be hard-hitting like little else in still-danceable dance music. Mancunian producer Empyrean, appearing on Traum sublabel Zauberness, falls into that rarified latter category, coming out of the gates with a short but remarkably strong debut LP of narcotic, sedate 2-step.
Full disclosure: I'm not sure if you'd want to dance to it, but regardless, Sans Semblance exists in an amber-hued world of permanent sunset. If that all sounds a little heavy, well, it is, and part of how Empyrean is so successful here is that he weighs the music down with physical weight as much as emotional. BPMs are dragged down as low as 105 on the title track and closer "Forlorn Abyss." Even the 125 BPM "Nomad"—a more acceptable garage tempo—features drums that feel like they're momentarily lagging behind, chords swollen with reverb and vocals blurring across the horizon. He always leaves space for his elements to move around, though, so even on a track like "Almagest"—otherwise saturated with world-weary melody—he avoids the sensory overload of flashy garage in favour of a mood more belaboured but no less penetrative.
Empyrean's music is undeniably pretty stuff: the 8-bit accents on "Odalisque" are like little shards of opalescence glinting in the distance. The only conceivable issue with Sans Semblance is its considerable conceit: this is pretty stuff, but dourly self-serious at that. It's a kind of glacial dread that's hard to avoid in this sort of ambient-infused dance music, but Empyrean mostly pulls it off, choosing fleeting melodies that either fly out of earshot or are cleverly clipped before they can become cloying. Sans Semblance is short, but it's hard to imagine dealing with more than thirty minutes of music this unrelentingly lachrymose—but in concentrated doses it's a hell of a downer. In a good way.
Tracklist 01. Fervid
02. Odalisque
03. Almagest
04. Sans Semblance
05. Nomad
06. Forlorn Abyss