Isorinne: Wave Stuff
Origin Peoples

It's tempting to slot Wave Stuff into the collage category, but Stockholm-based Michel Isorinne deflects the atempt by effecting the smoothest of transitions between the recording's many parts. Throughout this heady concoction, spoken word interludes surface alongside lustrous synth-pop, New Age, and chillwave, the listener challenged at times to identify the speaker and the TV or film production from which the sample originated. Issued in twelve-inch and cassette formats, Isorinne's debut release for Origin Peoples presents an hour-long phantasmagoria that tickles the senses and synapses in equal measure; on the vinyl version, eight distinct “waves” are identified, whereas each cassette side unspools as a stand-alone thirty-minute suite.

Consistent with the wonky character of cassette culture, analog synthesizer textures lend the material a creaky, time-warped quality, and in such moments the music exudes a gauzy sparkle that invites comparison to acts like Plone, Ulrich Schnauss, and Electric Youth. Halfway through side A, a quietly jubilant interweave hints at a Kraftwerk influence, and the glossy twinkle of the synth timbres might have you also thinking of Vangelis and Tangerine Dream. Yet while all such connections might legitimately be proposed, Wave Stuff never comes across as a lazy patchwork stitched together from the innovations of others; instead, Isorinne alchemizes said influences into a personalized creation that stands on its own terms while at the same time aligning itself to specific traditions.

Mood shifts are plentiful, though, as mentioned, they're effected carefully to avoid a sense of disruption, and while the chugging pitter-patter of ‘70s drum machine beats intermittently emerges to buoy the material with kinetic drive, Isorinne's careful to not let associations with standard dance genres become too prominent, even if a few pulsating parts do flirt with techno and house. On the voice sample front, contrast is in plentiful supply, with multiple speakers adding contrast to the design as they muse about time, physics, and mortality. During one rather Boards of Canada-like sequence, for instance, a male speaker intones, “The first thing you become aware of when you make a long trip through the South seas is that everyone has his own way of killing time.”

May 2018