Take some idm, downtempo, a big portion of dub, add a little bit of lounge, a hint of jazz, a touch of spacey atmospheres, some crisp sounds, insightful voice samples, a big load of playfulness, good production and composition. Put it all in a blender, mix for a continuous five minutes and voila! What you are holding in your goblet is no less than Capsula's Sense of a Drop. Well this is if you want to describe it the easy way. Let's elaborate....
This album is very psychedelic, not only in the structure of each track but also in regard of how Capsula presents you with different states of consciousness. The production and composition are great. Yosi does a great job twisting the sounds and making you feel like you are tumbling down a spiral, getting split into a million pieces and then pushed through a black hole and being reassembled on the other side, levitating towards some brighter place or dwindling down into the more contemplative depths of the mind. The sound and feel of the music is constantly shifting, morphing into new moods and atmospheres. The album feels very unpretentious; it's not trying to be anything fancy, or to give the listener something new or groundbreaking. I get the feeling that Capsula is trying to just give the listener a good ride. Fans of dubby downtempo will surely enjoy this, and if you have an aptitude for crisp sounds used in great production it will suit you like a glove.
Let's talk a little bit about the structure, or more precisely the form of the album. As I mentioned earlier there is a ton of variety in there. It's quite puzzling since the album throughout doesn't go from genre to genre, since in any particular track you can find a wide variety of them. But if you look at the album as an entity there is a structure to be found, beginning on the mellow side of things, gradually becoming more intense and groovy and then ending as it started. And when the last track Zero One Blues hits, it's really a relief. Not a relief because what preceded it is bad, but as having finished a long workout or finally understood a hard mathematical endeavor. A workout for the mind.
So all is bright under the sun? Well actually not, there are some problems with this release. The diversity is great, production as well. At times the album sounds great and at other times not so great, as a whole the album is a little bit inconsistent in quality. Sometimes it feels as the emphasis has been put on good production and composition rather than trying to transcend something genuine. But this can be a matter of personal taste, I rather have an artist focusing on one type of genre or direction and then perfecting it. |
