CD: Levantis - Romantic Psychology 1

I spin about the gravity-free access chambers of Levantis’s Romantic Psychology 1. He calls this entry experience “Exploding Boxes”. I ping about for four minutes, finding my bearings, disorientated, my weightless form clanking into equipment, each sound rendered opaque and radio-mic metallic. I push through an airlock. The next area – "Red Blocks" – is in darkness. Must be some sort of engine in here, judging by the low, echoing hum. This lasts for five minutes and it’s spooky.

I’m glad to move beyond it. My senses pulse. Is there a lifeform? Something’s going on, certainly. “Yoghurt” thuds and peels, the mournful “Peris Rapae” follows it, wafting melancholy, firing out lazers. Both are too brief to get a bead on.

Levantis. Who is he? A veritable master, we’re told, but his identity is masked by Technicolour, his home base, part of the Ninja Tune empire. His being is hidden behind androids aboard Romantic Psychology 1 in the depths of space. A robot arrives. Its malfunctioning vocal unit renders all it wishes to say an incomprehensible buzz – “You’ll fish! You’ll fish!” It clanks away, an industrial electro unit. I’m midway through and becoming lost, temporarily, amid glitch-wobbles and blur. This is only accentuated by “Colours”, which contains none, only machine rhythms heard through a mattress via a broken amplifier. At its end I swear I heard far eastern bell melodies.

The final stretch, then. Ten minutes of deep space hypnosis courtesy of “Jamaican Greek Style”. My blood throbs in my ears. Or is it something else? Cybernetic bird-tweets and almost inaudible marimba sounds massage my mind, looping, repeating, slowing down, slowing down. Finally I am left with “Slow Electronic Beat With Colour”. It wakes me and pushes me back out of Levantis’s world, with a final jarring machine tap’n’hiss. I only entered 33 minutes ago. It’s not been life-changing but it has been interesting. Far from pop – or even club music – Levantis has built strange things that are worth probing for further value.

Overleaf: Listen to "Jamaican Greek Style"