David Mason takes a far more meditative but no less effective turn with this new digital-only Listening Center long-player

The next few months will unsurprisingly see a significant disruption to the manufacture and distribution of physical musical product. Although this will pain collectors/hoarders like ourselves at Concrete Islands it does force us to fixate on the content over the medium. Although in normal times this download release from the Listening Center wouldn’t have felt like it had truly arrived without a corresponding vinyl-pressing on Polytechnic Youth or at least a small cassette run on David Mason’s own Temporary Tapes micro-label, in the current circumstances we should be grateful that it has a means to be heard at all. The thought of such a sublime offering as this languishing unlistened to, for potentially months on end, would be yet another downside to the pan-global predicament we find ourselves in.

For those accustomed to the more bustling micro-beats-driven side of the Listening Center’s repertoire, which reached somewhat of a percussive pinnacle with last year’s Retrieving LP, this lower-key and lower-tempo affair will feel like quite a departure. Yet it should be a welcome one. The product of Mason deploying an Oberheim polysynth previously acquired for a soundtrack project and mothballing his drum machines, these eleven essays in ambient-minimalism are led heavily by impressive antiquarian-foresight.

The collective results are both soothing and imposing, living-up to the apt Diaphanous Structures title by being gauzy but grounded and improvisational yet focused. Mason pushes proceedings through fleeting electro études (“Opening Space” and “High Rise Vista” ), pirouetting neo-classical passages (“Interior Hue” and “A Torn Hedge”), buzzing retro-space-age mood-pieces (“Hovering Haze” and “Sad Center”), spooked subterranean soundscapes (“Glass Phantoms”) and spacious pellucid sprawling (“Clear Gates”). Whilst skilful yet subtle nods are made along the way to Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, early-Steve Roach, Paulina Anna Strom and on/off labelmate Polypores, the core of this album sits inside a bespoke sonic bubble.

Whilst other Listening Center albums might grab the attention more determinedly, Diaphanous Structures is a startlingly-transcendental shift into a very promising and refreshed sonic dimension for David Mason’s ever-evolving enterprise.

listening-center.com

Adrian
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