James Place

A distillation of cultural memory through electronic process, James Place - the creative guise of New York native Phil Tortoroli, returns with his third release for Umor Rex. The sonic realization of love and loss, re-sculpted for the Post-Modern age, pursuing his glacial take on techno into newly intimate depths. Departing from a line in TS Elliot’s Four Quartets “the moment in and out of time”, its works take form through the haze of a dream. Over the course of several months Tortoroli tracked heaps of live stereo jams at home, jamming on his drum machine, sampler, polysynth, and effects setup. Poring over these hours of hazy jams, Tortoroli heard himself straining for an additional voice to further emote. Rifling through a vast library of old bounces and experiments, Tortoroli rediscovered the music of Sam Sally to complete Voices Bloom, resampled live and again “subdued into explorations of an old practice”. Voices Bloom is the musicality of cultural collage, immensely personal and intimate, arms stretched out, gathering diverse sonic worlds. The artist and his craft as a self-reflexive lens for an electronic age - a sonic patchwork heard from afar - impressions of memory, drawn close to the heart. Within the album’s cool displaced tones, rise nostalgic romances, drifting rhythmic works which defy the beat. A world where time enters multiple frames, those possible, literal, implied, forgotten, and remembered anew. The final results on Voices Bloom are the most reflective yet from James Place. The hopeful kosmische beats and hauntological synth music on previous albums, and more delicate melodies, riding crisp minimal rhythms that flow elegantly from vignette to vignette. Rhythms of abstract techno with glistening melodic lights.