36: Circuit Bloom
3six Recordings

Dennis Huddleston is the very model of consistency. Every six months or so, a new 36 collection appears, each one as solid as the last and each one reminding us of his unerring talent for crafting state-of-the-art electronic music. Circuit Bloom is no different in that regard, even if it brings with it a return after seven years to the tape format. In content terms, the move is significant: in its cassette presentation (100 copies), the EP presents six pieces; the digital release, on the other hand, includes five bonus tracks as alternate “Versions” that aren't simply alternate takes but instead rain-drenched ambient remixes of the cassette pieces.

Totaling a half-hour, the originals are grounded in delicate piano-based loops Huddleston envelops with gauzy atmospherics and neon-lit synthesizer flourishes, the latter of which might have you thinking of Vangelis's Blade Runner soundtrack. Interestingly, Huddleston himself references themes of isolation and escapism as filtered through a Cyberpunk-inspired lens as foundational to the project, and certainly representative tracks like “Circuit Bloom” and “Eight Four” exemplify a deep melancholy one might associate with isolation, the kind of thing someone feeling destitute and abandoned by society might be going through. Things take an especially dramatic turn during “Changing Faces (Static Places)” when Huddleston drapes string washes across a meditative assemblage of murmuring voices, synth blaze, and elegant piano phrasings. The synth textures featured in “Metropolis” and elsewhere evoke an earlier era, with the sleek sound one associates with contemporary gear exchanged for one rendered hazy by time and experienced more through the scrim of memory than as an immediate physical stimulus.

June 2018