Purelink
Signs

Release Date: 09/15/2023 | Tracklist

Purelink make ambient for those who like their downtime to sit adjacent to pockets of alternative dimensions; their sound is a gentle, alien weave of shifting textures, transportive and soothing though rarely suggestive of familiar comforts (unless you're fortunate enough that this kind of thang is your familiar comfort). Aqueous layerings bleed in and out of one another while dubby grooves pulse and dip as though in response to unseen robotics whirring away towards a mystery purpose. At times it seems almost thrillingly impersonal – all that keeps opener "In Circuits" out of the same ballpark as the dreamlike technological manglings of '90s Oval is a stable beat – while at others it's content to orbit in a more inviting points of contact, as per the delicate motif that nourish "4k Murmurs" and "Pinned"'s nostalgic chord loop. Much like genre titan Vladislav Delay, Purelink add contour to otherwise immaterial soundscapes with rhythmic subtleties and intermittent glitch effects; more specific to themselves, the glitches in question are not so much abrupt refractions within the image-frame so much as the gentle trickling of light and dust from a source just outside it. Purelink are masterful in taking this in their stride without ever overstating it, and in in just 40 luminous minutes they lay down a convincing reassertion of strengths whereby ambient dub has preserved an advantage over practically every major school of the genre – who knew that that trademark emphasis on space and timbre never had to come at the cost of equivalent nuance in rhythm! Signs is wonderful; hit it up.

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3.6 great