chevel: always yours

Chevel gives the prism-pushers at Mumdance and Logos' Different Circles label their first album release with Always Yours; a slanted new take on the "weightless" paradigm, floating somewhere between headspaces associated with the styles of Lee Gamble, Actress, and Logos. Paradoxically the longest and yet most minimalistic release on Different Circles to date, Always Yours says its piece in succinct yet expansive terms, rendering precisely tooled rhythms and technoid motifs in acres of suspenseful emulated space in a way that connects the brutally efficient dynamic of late '90s tech-step with a Raster Noton-like appreciation of pointillist reduction. In that imagined space Chevel moves like a Soviet gymnast or prototype robot fluidly executing a demanding routine full of intricate, rigid steps. From the ambient airlock of "One Evening In July" he pulls off the aerobic mid-air swiftness of "The Call", which comes off like a syncopated Sleeparchive workout, before twisting into the knotted quasi-step of "Bullet" and stepping into hyperspace on "Arp 2600". Another ambient interlude "Warming Bath" returns the LP to balmier states, before the jagged pulse of "Data Recovery" pulls back into the dance like a virulent Alva Noto piece, and "Dem Drums" pitch to the rave's darker side, but ultimately the lushly self-explanatory "Underwater" and "Always Yours" keep the LP hovering around the edge of ecstasy and the abyss with a grasp of heady, day-after feelings known to ravers the world over. Cover photo by Yusuke Yamatani. Vinyl master and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy.