pataphysical: hapticality

Cult ambient trio Pataphysical finally make their exceptional ‘Hapticality’ set available on vinyl with a typically handsome Good Morning Tapes edition, a follow-up of sorts to that killer/prized 12th Isle side, landing somewhere inside/around the CV & JAB x 0PN x BoC dream-interzone. 'Hapticality’ is a gently febrile session weft from whimful sketches plotted out between 2013-2021, and like their much lauded ‘Periphera’ LP, Andrés Saenz De Sicilia, Camilo Tirado and Matt Linares hustle a dream sequence of FM synth fronds laced with field recordings and analogue textures that effortlessly wrap us up in their sound, calling to mind the post-new age ambient and jazz inflected interzones of CV & JAB as much as 0PN’s hypnagogic wooze or BoC’s pastoral vignettes. Where the moniker Pataphysical could have bogged down other operators, the trio deftly work under that mantle with a mix of sublime, world building lushness and unanticipated turns that slowly bifurcate and reweave the listener’s lines of thought into theirs. With time slipping guile they lead from the contemplative oasis of ’Sonora’ to a perfectly unanticipated arrival of a Welsh narrator on the pastoral ‘Moonlit Picnic’, with the dematerialised dub of ‘Integument’ drifting into their most immersively descriptive sound design on the album’s title cut, and Gabriel Chips’ extended reed tekkers blossoming into 4th world whorls on ‘Break Lament' to sound something like Tara Clerkin Trio on mushies. Hard to deny that Pataphysical’s brand of sensory seduction is at its most intoxicating here, subtly quilting a more grown-up alternative to the pillowy mass of modern ambient music in a way that's richly imaginative and satisfying, making for one of our favourite Good Morning Tapes releases of the last couple of years.