Eskmo’s sophomore release approaches the top of the exosphere and we feel fine

Los Angeles’ Brendan Angelides, the critical mass behind Eskmo (and Welder), seems to have reached escape velocity. Or rather, I suspect he has the formula to do so. But instead, the producer remains with us, delivering sophomore full-length SOL via Apollo Records five years after his glitchier self-titled debut (2010).

He tells DAZED‘s Aimee Cliff that, this time around, he wanted to create a record that sounded like the sun. “I’ve always equated the sound of tinkering to humans. If you were to zoom out, the sound that an ant colony might make. I kind of picture that that’s how humans sound. For the sun, I wanted to get this beaming, big feeling.”

SOL is a somewhat international album, with found sounds from Colorado, California (Joshua Tree and Yosemite), Costa Rica, and Egypt. We could describe it vaguely as larger-than-life, Vangelis-esque, percussive bliss, but it’s easier if you just listen for yourself.

Angelides captures his listeners from the very start, with a moody, inquisitive trickle that broadens into the galaxy-spanning “SpVce,” before a diminuendo puts the track on a descent immediately after reaching altitude. “Combustion” builds off the bubbling energy, borrowing scalar runs from a live string ensemble, though vast wilderness permeates through quiet interjections before the piece breaks into a choppy river of samples — this track, like every other on the album (we’ll come to find), offers a brilliant cinematic soundscape complete with its own exposition, climax, and denouement.

There are several tracks with vocals on SOL, with rather minimalistic lyrics — frankly, the instrumentals serve enough intricacies to keep the listener occupied and fascinated. The most simple of the 10-track set is perhaps the most beautiful on its own. “Tamara,” a short piano track accompanied by subtle synth breezes and all the feelings, is stunningly clear in its purpose — stripped of all excess and exposed.

In an unexpected contrast to follow this clarity, SOL’s title track is alarmingly dark, for its title, a sort of antithesis to the statement the album tries to make. Warped swirling synth covers a marching bass-line, generating a sense of unrest and urgency that dissipates midway through “The Light of One Thousand Furnaces,” when the fluttery symphonic build-up scatters into a series of more percussive thought experiments at varying levels of vigor.

An incredibly mature, confident, and sophisticated effort, SOL cannot be properly summed by its parts. It’s a real journey, somewhere between an electronic experiment and an instrumental score. It’s “background music,” but it gets in the way. (It’s attention-demanding, but it’s attention-deserving.) Second single, “The Sun is a Drum,” serves as a fair illustration, but we cannot stress enough the treasure of playing this new trajectory through.

Until March 2, here’s a stream courtesy of DAZED. Angelides will be in San Francisco at Public Works April 15.

Article by Joanna Jiang