Toronto’s Egyptrixx (real name David Psutka) returns to Night Slugs with his immersive second album “A/B til Infinity”.
Since his 2011 debut LP “Bible Eyes”, Psutka has been busy with various studio production projects as well as recording and touring with his side-project Hiawatha.
His return as Egyptrixx takes the form of a multi-media collaboration with Berlin-based visual artist A.N.F. (Andreas Fischer).
Together the pair focused on a process – a set of ‘meaning-through-reduction’ principles applied to both sound and video – with atmosphere, repetition and texture given priority over traditional ideas of narrative and song structure.
Fisher’s visuals began to take shape, depicting molten off-planet environments, strange underground realms and volcanic caves lined with arrays of fluorescent light tubes, and Psutka responded by soundtracking these new digital environments.
The resulting nine tracks and their accompanying series of videos and images became “A/B til Infinity”, a mesmeric environment rendered in the crystalline HD that has marked out Egyptrixx’ work since his earliest productions.
The music is by turns meditative, violent and evocative; glassy and earth-shattering. Here sound-design and song-writing are one and the same – Psutka stretches a DX7 to its limits, its shuddering hits deployed throughout. 808 and Simmons drum machines pound extreme-metal blastbeats, then disappear into gaseous SFX, a rockpool in a virtual cavern. Digital choirs intone and beautiful synths envelop everything. Necessary forays into club territory on lead 12″ cut “Water” and the tribal locomotive “Alta Civilization” are seamless, their akinness to Techno or EBM feels incidental to this record’s greater experience, though DJs may definitely disagree.
Looking back, “Bible Eyes” now seems like a wide open expanse, while “A/B till Infinity” lets its listener hover with it in the eerie synthesised twilight depicted on its cover.
Released November 26th 2013 via Night Slugs (worldwide) & Last Gang Entertainment (Canada).
> listen to Egyptrixx’ NSMIX003 featuring tracks from the upcoming LP
