Sky H1 - Motion

fumi · January 11, 2017

First thing so far this year I've enjoyed a lot. (sorry, Eno)

Discovered this Belgian artist on Bleep 100 of 2016.

This has got some great touches. It's kind of a mix between 80s New Age, OPN, Cocteau Twins, Quiltland and some others. Probably just best to listen.

Some Boomkat blurb:

If you’ve had an ear to PAN's recent NTS shows or frequent the likes of Berlin’s Creamcake or London’s Bala Club, it’s possible that you’ve at least seen her name, if not been wowed by Air - a pensile, elegiac wonder rent in noctilucent chorals and arcing Autechrian pads - which heads and opens up the emotional floodgates of Sky H1’s debut EP.

With a vaporous construction inversely proportional to its emotional gravity, Air outlines a sense of melancholic catharsis mutual to music by Elysia Crampton, Visionist or Holy Other; expressing a struggle between states of melancholy and joy that stem from a personally turbulent period which perfuses the rest of the record.

Where many other producers are currently playing out hyper-violent beat-em-up scenarios, the more reserved Motion indulges a plangent lushness to aching affect; oscillating nervous percussion and agonised choral cadence in Hybrid with glassy soft and weightless chimes in Night/Fall/Dream imbued with the pink rawness of freshly picked scab skin, before she finds an impish sort of rave diva spirit in Tell Me, and the final couplet, Land and Think I Am beautifully nail a sort of R&B blessed with baroque posture and ambient aura.

It’s all inarguably up there with the best, most addictive new music we’ve heard in 2016, and hugely recommended if you know what’s good.