Review Summary: Another dense, idm and drum & base album from Cameron Williamson aka zenxienz.
Zenxienz or Cameron Williamson to his, parents, friends (not sure about neighbors) is certainly a man on a mission. A man truly trying to operate as a zen science(tist). After he came up with his Mind Sigh album in February 2017 Brainforest followed just in August 2017, already in November 2017, he is coming up with yet another album, Cosmosis. And that is where that mission factor comes in. After suffering from a serious bout of depression, sometime in 2016, after he recovered, Cameron decided to write a new track every day. Every single day. Oh, he also coupled that with digital art, which he uses in his production of both tracks and seemingly album covers.
After detailed listens to both Brainforest and Cosmosis, I can say that the musical results zenxienz is coming up with are shaping nicely in the fields of IDM and/or EDM, whichever way you put it. As previously, on Cosmosis Williamson comes up again with dense, spatial musical (as well as visual) images that are filled to the brim with the intense sound produced by his electronics and vocals (courtesy of Swinky) and eastern percussion and sounds on a few tracks here. The Eastern influences should be no surprise to those aware of the facts that Williamson was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Hawaii. While these influences on tracks like “Fusion Dissolution” are quite prominent, elsewhere they are simply, consciously or unconsciously woven into the structure of the music itself. As on Brainforest, zenxienz again on Cosmosis breathes new life into slowly waning drum & bass genre giving it new life but not really letting it dominate any single track.
The density and intense nature of the music on Cosmosis probably has a lot to do with the fact that as zenxienz, Williamson is actively engaged in spreading awareness about mental diseases like depression, something he is clearly licensed to talk about. There is an imminent danger that coming up with new releases so frequently there is a possibility that you will both dilute the quality and the intensity of your message. As far as zenxienz is concerned, so far so good. Let's hope it stays that way.
