Light Conductor – Sequence Two

Brain Eno, a pioneer of electronic music and countless other genres, once said that ambient music must “be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular. It must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”

Although the devilishly shimmering analog synth work of Light Conductor—made up of Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes) and Stephen Ramsay (Young Galaxy)—is not completely ambient, this statement is true for their second LP, Sequence Two. This is an album you can get completely lost in; as the world around you seems to slowly fade, your sensory perception melts, and all you can hear is the chiming, electronic colours of drone and soaring melody. 

It’s also an album perfect for doing the dishes or any other mindless repetitive task. There are enough lull moments to not completely strangle your attention, but also moments of explosive sonic creativity that entice you to crank up the volume, like the sparse, cherubic falsettos during the outro of “Splitting Light.” I’m reminded of the same euphoric feeling I had after hearing the guitar work on Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” for the first time.

It’s difficult to completely decipher what you’re hearing—a universe being born (“The Rooms Are Turning Inside Out”) or being completely destroyed (“Pyramids In Slow Rotation”)—but there are definitely some points of sheer awe on Sequence Two. These are two musicians who are in-tune with the endless possibilities of analog synthesizers and use them to create pocket dimensions of experimental bliss.

The flow is seamless, not focusing on the consciousness of individual songs, but the overall chimerical atmosphere of the album. Simply, Sequence Two feels like one song created for an unwritten cinematic sci-fi expedition in the same vein as Interstellar, or something more arcane like Beyond the Black Rainbow.