5 – Ital Tek – Hollowed (Planet Mu)
The top five I'm about to list each pluck my emotions way more than anything else listed so far. Consider this lot special fried gold. Grilled silk. Battered platinum.
There’s a word I saw used in a review of Ital Tek’s fifth album: “maximalism”. That refers to a day-glo Rustie gloss in which everything is turned up to 92. I think we need a new word for Hollowed, though. Maximum ambient. "Maximbient"? "Ambimum"?
Alan ‘Ital Tek’ Myson (first mentioned here in 2008) tried to rediscover his teenage muse, when his sonic ramblings ran free and wild. As a result, Hollowed is cut from “hours of drones, loops and textures.” Crikes. All I did in my teenage years was tape the top 40. Finger on pause button, trying to cut out Bruno Brookes’s waffling.
The helicoptering Jenova, the fuzzy Clark-ish pulse of Beyond Sight, the snappy assault of Cobra: this is full of light and dark. Things build, crescendo, fall, and tear another glorious hole in your ears. But it's in those between moments, when the static hangs in the air, that the ambimum thrills most. Yeah. Maybe not "ambimum". "Ambaximent"?!
Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.