Bleep

Ryan Lee West had found himself in a kind of private hiatus following his 2022 album Now Is. For a work so focussed on untangling the present, nothing seemed to move much afterwards. It was only after shifting gears and scenery that things started to click again, sparking a post-hibernatory efflorescence of creativity that would soon become his ninth Rival Consoles album Landscape from Memory. Its title seems synonymous with “rebuilding from scratch”, and its music effuse with detail conceptualises all things “re-”: reviewing, rekindling, rejoining, as he fleshes out sonic sketches collected over the years to come back with one of his strongest, most engaging records to date.

With white brushstrokes splattered across his discography in the wake of the album’s announcement, it’s hard not to think of these tracks in a painterly way. Combinations of hues and tones, chiaroscuro illustrated with tangible swoops of the paintbrush, as a magical culmination of synth textures and melodies emerge. The transportive quality of ‘In Reverse’ sets the scene for Landscape from Memory, its twangy plucks bent towards rigorous motion through crisp, material shuffles and sweeps. It’s as if West is looking back while moving forwards, taking stock of the verbose and visually stimulating sonic language he has constructed thus far while pushing it in entirely new directions.

There’s a cinematic methodology to the way he purposefully arranges these sounds: the harpsichord-like analogue modulations of ‘Gaivotas’ with switches and synth voicings pushed to artful extremes, the enveloping swaddle of ambience thick as a tendril of smoke on ‘Nocturne’, the fluctuating callback to ‘Vision of Self’ thrust into a brazen forwardness on ‘2 Forms’. The almost garage rhythm of ‘Catherine’ steps between split second flitting buzzes and cathartic keys, the world trickling in through glass clicks and thunks, then plummets to a bass drop minimal in practice yet filling the entire track with an unwavering elegance. This is dance music that is quietly effective, possessing a strength so subtle and considered it stomps till it reaches a heaving peak you didn’t even know it was building up to.

Through new perspectives and structures, Rival Consoles has made his productions the most evocative they’ve ever been on Landscape from Memory.