Another unusual release from the (perhaps) German creator ypsmael who sometimes records as smaely p and might at other times identify as nm. Akystret (CHOCOLATE MONK choc.360) has been released on CDR and as a vinyl edition, indicating the label has invested a deal of its resource into this lone process-heavy creator, with their guitars, pedals, tapes, and field-recording manipulation.
I’ve been left high and dry by previous releases from this mysterious figure, but perhaps I haven’t been sufficiently saturated in their ocean of debris. I see that today’s record – which might veer towards being a showcase for their guitar playing – also includes repurposed live recordings and room recordings from as far back as 2011 to 2013, indicating that nm likes to the take the long view and regards their audio life as a continual cycle of layering and recontextualising of sounds; if that’s right, they might not be too far apart from the methods of Frans de Waard. Akystret does in places feel weightier, more considered, less sketchy than previous items heard in these walls; occasionally we veer off into rather bleak and heavily-abstracted zones, where the coldness and lack of a human presence has its own aesthetic frisson.
On ‘Allein Mit’ we’re more successful at discerning treated guitar solos which keen like a lonely wolf against a backdrop of drone, distortion, and unknown layerings; it’s like a nightmarish take on the genre of New Age Music. ‘Ele’ on the B side of the album feels like a sketch for a lost Popol Vuh recording, haunted by the spectre of Daniel Fichelscher. (28/10/2024)