Description

Ital Tek a.k.a. Alan Myson returns to Planet Mu with his sixth album lsquoOutlandlsquo. The album was written during a period of new beginnings following a move out of the city to a quieter space and the birth of his first child. During this time of selfimposed isolation Alan recorded a huge amount of source material and spent weeks and months sitting up at night with his newborn, listening back and making notes on how the new record should take form, focusing and developing ideas to shape this lean tentrack album. Alan talks of the record being a collaboration between two parts of himself, something that definitely comes across as the album unfolds. Textures are something Alan excels at and on his last album, the largely beatless lsquoBodiedrsquo, it felt as if he was building a new soundworld. On lsquoOutlandrsquo he expands upon this. The album brings together the extremes of Alans sound, contrasting roughened bass and beats with starker more detailed atmospheres and emotions. The most beatdriven song here is lsquoDeadheadrsquo, with its gnarled bouncing bass, angular distorted melodies and cavernous textures. On tracks like lsquoBladed Terrainrsquo the contrasts are even more defined with buzzing drones and razor sharp drums plunging into a grainy fog, giving the track a dramatic 3D feel. Then there are the stopstart pauses of lsquoLeaving The Gridrsquo, where the song evaporates into space before reemerging with shuddering rhythms and ghostly textures. Melodies crawl around these tracks as if theyrsquore just waking up, as heard on the atmospheric lsquoAngel In Ruinrsquo. The sleepdeprived fraying of the senses became Alanrsquos routine and one which he says gave him a renewed creative energy halfasleep, working through the night, and then into the daytime superfocused but exhausted. Prone to audio hallucinations whilst writing the album, he aimed to capture these distortions in his perception of pitch and time, and you can hear these effects interpreted on tracks like lsquoEndlessrsquo and lsquoOpen Heartrsquo as melodies phase and slip out of time like an emotional Doppler effect. This is also true of the soaring atonal synths at the peak of lsquoDiamond Childrsquo, which feel like the aural equivalent of eye floaters. These intuitive feelings and functions are a difficult thing to capture in sound, but Alan manages it beautifully and always makes the result feel warm and adventurous, heartfelt and epic. Ital Tek CD is available for home delivery from Vinyl Records London, only £10