Bleep

Seemingly not one to settle down, Martin Jenkins has released a full length record every year since the first Black Mill Tape in 2010. His work as Pye Corner Audio has been steeped in murky synthwave and sci-fi explorations, with synths wailing like ghostly apparitions and beats lurking underneath. As he moves on from his Ghost Box trilogy that ended in 2021’s Entangled Routes, he not only steps out of the darkness but rises from the subterranea altogether, meeting an overworld flooded with light.

Let’s Emerge! marks a dazzling change of pace for Pye Corner Audio. With a breath of fresh air, he steps back onto Sonic Cathedral’s turf to present a rich feast of shimmering electronic textures that invoke sunlit landscapes teeming with life. The artwork takes inspiration from covers including Stereolab, Spacemen 3, and The Beach Boys - Jenkins taps into a more organic sound palette also enlisting Andy Bell of Ride fame to add a distinctively warm and psychedelic shoegaze tinge through a myriad of guitar tones.

Stuttering grasshoppers and chirping birds wake from their wintry slumber as the Sun rises on the picturesque opener ‘De-Hibernate’, echoes of surf guitars priming the listener for a set of breezy and uplifting songs. The synths on ‘Lyracal’ oscillate like oasis waters in a heat wave, with crystallised plucks slipping through the thick caramel textures. Baroque flutters of flutes paint ‘Haze Loops’ with elegant brushstrokes, and the grand, cinematic progressions of ‘Saturation Point’ evoke long desert road drives: sunroof down, radio on loud, and clear blue sky all around.

The maximalist closer of ‘Warmth Of The Sun’ ties up Let’s Emerge! with blissful shreds and vocoder praises, basking in the light of the surface world that Pye Corner Audio has lovingly channelled on his most expansive album yet.