Nonlinear

by HVL

A friend of mine is fond of saying, "music is infinite" when talking about the sheer amount of stuff that is released each week. Whilst not true in the literal sense, it's pretty much certain that nobody can keep up with everything, and, if you think about it, a corollary is that an artist you should like might completely pass you by for years. Which brings me to HVL. How the hell did I not know about this guy until the other week?

HVL is Gigi Jikia from Tbilisi, Georgia, who has been releasing music for over 10 years and has nine albums to his name. The 14 tracks here sound a bit like Skee Mask, with elements of Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and early Autechre, all beautifully conceived and produced. He sounds like he has complete control of his musical palette and every synth wash or shuffling breakbeat complements all of the other elements perfectly. He has the confidence to let his sequences of rhythm and bass frequencies evolve slowly and naturally, locking the listener inside the music. The main effect is one of calm and wonder, like listening to music from inside the womb, as on the opener Signal Us and Dxoid Instrument, but other tracks, like Nonlinear Time, have a disconcerting edge, with icy Aphexian ambience and BoC-like delayed beats. Nonlinear Time (Re-Orched) doubles down on this and sounds like a SAW II outtake.

There are a couple of truly stunning tracks on Nonlinear and both remind me of the more ambient moments on Autechre's Amber. At Peace With Death is beautiful and evolving, with its multiple threads of ambient synth lines and snaking beats weaving in and out of each other. There is majesty and poise to this track and it's the highlight of the album. Almost as good is the closer, Flurries, which is based around a heavily-delayed synth line that crescendos towards the end.

Elsewhere, everything is pretty much uniformly good but one thing that hold a few tunes back is a lack of development. On the longer tracks my mind can begin to wander. That's only momentary, though, and the album is enjoyable from back to front.