Milan W.

Milan Warmoeskerken’s – Intact swims through the almost ambient, but strangely propulsive waters that were populated by tectonic travelers like Boards of Canada, Autechre and a fairly full swath of the Ghost Box family. The record has the faded, filmstrip quality that, like Boards of Canada in particular, evokes a strong sense memory that brings the pencil shavings smell of the classroom rocketing back to mind. Its not the sweat and stagnation of clock watching school hours that flood back though, but rather the kind of daydream quality of staring at science films in the cloistered darkness, the kind that carried their own Sven Liabek and Vangelis homespun soundtracks with them.

The record jumps off from this kernel of nostalgia as a starting point and ropes in a gauze of dub, comedown shudders, skittering post-rave and icy atmospheres. The entirety of the record feels damp, like its being played inside a cold and humid underground club lined with clear walls that radiate obscured light. Its the whale song soundtrack to an ice hotel bar. A moss-strewn lie down, slowly ramping up to a hypnotic and hazy exotica dancefloor jaunt that’s rendered in slow motion. There are several artists that have tried a hand at the kinds of moods that Milan W. is pushing here, but its easy to get lost in abstraction, pretense or gimmick. Intact eschews all of these to capture the aesthetics that vault him into league with those luminaries he seeks to emulate.