ERSTLAUB: On Becoming An Island (Highpoint Lowlife)

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Posted on Nov 17th 2007 05:49 pm

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Erstlaub: On Becoming An Island

ERSTLAUB
On Becoming An Island
HPLL025
Highpoint Lowlife 2007
01 Track. 43mins49secs

Second in the Highpoint Lowlife series of exclusive digital releases and very limited CDRs is the latest offering by Scottish artist Dave Fyans, here operating under his Erstlaub guise. Hailing from Perth, on the East coast of Scotland, Fyans has previously been spotted on the excellent Some Paths Lead Back Again compilation put together by the Marcia Blaine School For Girls crew just under three years ago, where he contributed three tracks as Daigoro. More recently, he contributed a remix on the digital-only companion EP to the Marcia Blaine album, and he has self-released a handful of CDR albums.

Working solely with electronics, Fyans creates here an atmospheric epic. Featuring just one track stretched over just under forty four minutes, written and performed entirely on a Nord Modular G2 synthesiser, with no additional treatment, On Becoming An Island is a haunting piece of evolutionary electronic music, which goes from warm soundwaves in the early part to rich granular landscapes toward the end. In between, Fyans explores various terrains, at times dropping almost all remotely musical elements to focus purely on what appears to be percussive environmental sounds, around the eight minute mark, before drifting, for quite some time, toward splendid cosmic spreads just passed twenty minutes. For over ten minutes, Erstlaub’s island is as haunting and lonely as Kubrik’s space station in 2001. Part of the inspiration for this record is said to be solitude and isolation, and there are times during the journey when the listener find themselves almost entirely cut off from reality and plunged into a succession of wondrous atmospheric settings, and it would only be mildly surprising to hear the stone cold voice of HAL refusing re-entry into the real world at the end of the record.

Once again released only digitally, with just 100 CDs pressed, each presented in a white DVD case with beautiful artwork and a hand-numbered postcard, Erstlaub’s first full release for Highpoint Lowlife is an ambitious piece with vast evocative scope. Superbly assembled, this is certainly ranks amongst the label’s most fascinating releases.

3.9/5

Icon: arrow Erstlaub | Highpoint Lowlife

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2 Responses to “ERSTLAUB: On Becoming An Island (Highpoint Lowlife)”

  1. […] Very much like was the case on Broadcasting On Ghost
    Frequencies (Moving Furniture, 2009) or On Becoming An Island
    (Highpoint Lowlife, 2007), space is intrinsically part of the
    overall sound contingency of the […]

  2. […] Very much like was the case on Broadcasting On Ghost Frequencies (Moving Furniture, 2009) orOn Becoming An Island (Highpoint Lowlife, 2007), space is intrinsically part of the overall sound contingency of the […]