Opal Tapes, one of the most well-curated and interesting labels currently in electronic music, continue their recent streak of consistently mind-bending, genre defying releases with this latest project from Montreal based producer Stefan Jós, a subterranean journey through dubbed out house music and submerged techno. Like a deep sea vessel traversing unknown and blackened depths, the music is propelled forward on a torrent of well placed clicks and pops, kicks and high hats gurgling to the surface amidst a dizzying swirl of synth pads, and the distant alien songs of aquatic life.
In the Atrium opens the album with a steady and hypnotic four-to-the-floor rhythm that carries the listener through landscapes of unrecognizable ecology, high frequency chirps and cries emitting from unseen depths, hinting at a diversity of life drifting menacingly out of sight on sleek, phosphorescent bodies. Hidden caverns resonate with the drowned sounds of half submerged steel-drums, a sound that doesn't ring out, so much as sloshes around like water inside a rotating chamber.
The insistent bass throbs of Damasc Silk seem to imply a certain level of immediacy, the music pulled into a torrential slipstream as gears and mechanics click through an array of functions in an attempt to gain control once more of their surroundings. Echoes of delay ripple outward like deep-sea radar, neon-greens and blinking reds amidst dark, sleek panels, a visual reminder of the threat and wonder surrounding the listener at any given turn. While the first two tracks allow the sort of back-seat passivity of mere observer, title track Quatermass turns off the auto-pilot and launches the listener into an elevated sense of awareness and catharsis, warm currents of melody seeping their way between the seams of an otherwise cold, protective steel.
Throughout it's nearly 30 minutes, the music of Quatermass moves with the kind of natural, microscopic precision you'd expect to see only at the molecular level, synapses firing and collapsing like schools of fish expanding and contracting in an infinitely complex dance of interconnectedness. As the record comes to a close, the listener is left with the same feelings of weight and exhaustion one feels after emerging from the ocean; collapsed and gasping for breath, and already considering getting back in.