PIXEL

Billed as a soundtrack to an imaginary road movie this latest album from Jon Egeskov's Pixel project (his third in all) reaches into your subconscious and yanks out whatever images are lodged in there. Using a basic palette of miniscule percussive elemnts and delicately manipulated amplifier hiss Egeskov instils a sense of gentle motion, sounding out dream-like engine noise that propels the listener down whatever shady lane they're prepared to venture down. The floating hum and crinkled analogue warmth of Pixel's sound shifts around in a subtle, noir-ish fashion, rising and falling with an implicit sense of drama. While these sounds remain vaporous throughout, drifting through the tracks seemingly without any strict organisation, needle-sharp beats puncture the mix in a finely ordered formation. At their most complex these minutiae crackle and spit like a digital fire, as best heard on '4', which deploys its beats in finely detailed, ear-pleasing rhythmic clusters. While The Drive bears all the aesthetic hallmarks of so many other entries into the Raster Noton canon there's a sense of freedom embedded here on a structural level that's seldom apparent in the work of Egeskov's labelmates and peers. Highly recommended, of course...(BOOMKAT)