Shimmering Moods

ith the dust only just settling from the release of the delicate ambient textures of “Pleasurably Lost” on Eilean Rec. in april, Benjamin Finger returns with “Motion Reverse” on Shimmering Moods Records. Coming from someone in an apparent state of creative overdrive “Motion Reverse” is a surprisingly singular and coherent body of work that comes off as a bit of a side mission for an artist that has made “Onward!” his very own artistic slogan. “Motion Reverse” escapes the possible limitations implied by such a guiding imperative and sees an artist that, in accordance with the title, perhaps steps back a bit and completes a puzzle envisioned from pieces and patterns scattered around in his previous work. The result is a refreshing and nicely scheduled departure from Finger’s overall artistic journey, I soon and very readily referred to it as “the dirty dub album” and that is indeed how I like to quickly sum it up in my mind tenfolds of listens later. There is a playful hands-on approach at work here, immediately evident on the opening track “Vocal Limited”, where Finger creates melodic and rhythmic patterns by performing a vocal sample through time variations on what appears to be a tape delay. The following two tracks – “Frontal Waves” and “Dubstore Light” – mirrors each other and form a hypnotic, shimmering and pulsating dub-suite on their own that sounds like the classic dub of Basic Channel psychedelically reimagined, with the ghost of early Seefeel chanting in the background. “Childish Tape” is a playful interim with a sample of a child in joyous self discovery before the first half of the album is summed up and dissolved in “Black Hat”. The second half of the album is more neatly organized in melodic pieces, still with a strong foundation in dub. “Sunny Echoes” and “Spacecore Dust” have – titles aside – a nice nocturnal feel to them, both with a lovely reminiscence of stuff we used to find on releases from labels like Skam and Source back in the nineties and the latter admittedly being an Autechre tribute. The album then closes with two tracks – “Bright Exit”, that sounds like a subtly sung phonetic blues about the massive and grand finale of the drone-like massive synth washes of “Dream Logic”. The artwork is done by Benjamin himself and the Super 8 mm stills are from his visual work: «Loops The Loop», which was screened at Smith ́s Row Gallery in the UK and at Cinema Neuf in Norway 2013.