Illusion of Time stands out among the new releases, both on the artist’s side – the most exciting electronic music producers of the moment – and on the production side, with its endless exchange of files by email. Let’s take the elegant yet violent Daniel Avery, with his London rave baggage (Drone Logic) and discreetly earned title of “Richard D. James’ heir” (Song for Alpha), and connect him to the diabolical Alessandro Cortini, keyboardist with links to Nine Inch Nails and transalpine master of the Buchla synth. The resulting album is a perturbation, a worrying strangeness. Enough to please the apostles of noise.
There’s the grey sheets of shoegaze, the beloved modular sounds thoroughly saturated, the primal cry of the machines, the ambient that thunders like a promise we won’t keep, this pile-up of synthesizers -– masterful and definitive. Such are the strengths here.
Illusion of Time is a haunting album. Often the notes surprise us, emerging from the analog din (the very melodic title track), then leave the impression of horizons that extend into the darkest layers of the album (“Enter Exist”, “CC Pad”). Suddenly they escape, flee far away, and the infinite arrives with sweetness (“Water”). If the collaboration often doesn’t seem to be a real fusion, a little four-handed alchemy, we can still hear the tricks, and the perfect balance between these two behemoths. One can’t say if, in this duel, one dominates over the other. Maybe the perfect album to think about the times to come.
