Renick Bell - Wary

**Nil** · March 15, 2018

HALC017
RENICK BELL - WARY LP
RELEASE: March 16 2018
LABEL: HALCYON VEIL
FORMAT: DIGITAL

Halcyon Veil and Renick Bell are proud to present Renick Bell’s long-awaited long-player, Wary, out March 16th on digital formats. Wary features artwork by like-minded artist and Halcyon Veil mainstay Jesse Osborne-Lanthier and follows Empty Lake, Bell's 2016 release for Lee Gamble's UIQ imprint. The 10 fierce tracks on Wary come from Bell's practice of live coding in the algorave tradition; a distinct technique that involves manipulating a vast library of samples with text-based editing software. The album is an improvisatory gesture that sets him well apart from the DAW preset crowd, and one that draws equal influence from free jazz, King Tubby, Mark Fell, and Pan Sonic.

Still, as the musician points out in a paper he authored in 2014, live coding isn't a genre; it's simply a performing method. To focus on the technique is to lose sight of the huge amount of flex and funk that's contained in these tracks, from the vivid, elastic bass of opener "Root of the Light," to the blissed-out dub pads and FX of "Recognizing Conditioning," or the racecar-fuel lead synth in "Cyclical Forces."

These tracks, while constantly intricate, are just as often tuneful and memorable. "Resolute in Shedding" is a perfect example of Bell's disparate musical ingredients cohering into something with enough swagger to tear up a sound system or turn a dancefloor on its head.
"Cliff-face Growth" similarly underpins its frantic high-register synth work with a staggering sub-bass kick that immediately pulls the listener into the club.

The artwork, a bubbled hive of play buttons, comes courtesy of Jesse Osborne-Lanthier. The overlapping and swarming aspect of the art reflects the disorienting barrage of sounds that Renick Bell's tracks can throw at you, such as the pummelling percussion drive in "Fluid, Open." The uncanny, synthetic replication of the stippled buttons brings to mind Bell's own musical and technical replication. Although the patterns might be obscured they are never truly absent; everything is held together at all times by Bell's precise sense for what is genuinely striking.

Renick Bell has made legitimately new-sounding music here. Filled with breathtaking percussive bombs, icy needlepoint synthesis, and a defiant refusal to conform or relent, Wary speaks a complex and consistent language that's deeply rewarding to those who take the timeto learn it.

Renick Bell - Wary

01. Root of the Light
02. Convergence 1
03. Fluid, Open
04. Selling Your Future
05. Adapt
06. Recognizing Conditioning
07. Resolute in Shedding
08. Cliff-face Growth
09. Cyclical Forces
10. Convergence 2

Written and performed by Renick Bell
Artwork by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier
Mastered by Al Carlson