- Ambient music has been a gilded thread running through James Clements' music for a long time. But his last album as ASC, Nothing Is Certain, and its auxiliary Auxiliary singles showed ambient tendencies seeping in from behind the beats, and his newest project initiates with a release that sees his recent Autonomic sound collapsed, fetishizing the dust kicked up by settling rubble.
The Symbol series is a new limited-edition set of semi-conceptual releases on Clements' Auxiliary label, focusing on its own lack of focus. Where previous releases were reliably 170-ish drum & bass, the Symbol releases will be free from constraints of genre or scene, even forgoing titles in their quest for objectivity as sound pieces. The tracks that make up the first one are in fact at a regular 170 beats per minute, but in spirit they represent an extreme for ASC. The first track is six minutes of divine sighs and swells (sometimes channeled into human moans), guided by gentle wafts of sub heat and micro-glitching percussion.
At almost ten minutes, the second track is a natural centrepiece, playing out like Stars of the Lid remixed by dBridge. Echoed Eastern-tinged notes ring out over vast landscapes, harshly oxidized drums fighting their way through caked-on red sand. The EP's best soundscape is also its easiest to miss, the brief third track exhaling wispy plumes of smoke in a funereal expanse set so wide the drums feel like the pitter-patter of tiny insects, blurring the line between percussion and field recordings.
TracklistA Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled