Review Summary: Go listen, and then listen again
So now I come to Tcaresset in this wonderful journey of mine, and as fate would have it, the best of Hexalyne has been saved for last -- for the present moment, anyway. I must have listened to Tcaresset forty or even fifty times since its release two years ago; yet I still continue to be amazed and rewarded with new details with each and every listen. It's all so damn good, without a doubt, and for my money, Tcaresset is the best idm album of the past five years -- if not ten years, to be honest.
I first stumbled into Hexalyne and his music by accident, actually. Rewind a couple years and I had recently discovered the joys and hidden depth of Autechre, particularly LP5 and beyond; what was once sounding like robot belches and farts to my ears was now to me complex, abstract works of art, so magnetic and addictive. So of course I wanted more of Autechre's music, or something like it, even if it came from a different artist. Enter "Traces Set" on a random playlist, the featured bonus track here, as well as Hexalyne's contribution to Kaer Uiks' impressive Six Circuits compilation from late 2021. The song exemplifies Hexalyne's sound in all its grandeur: a sharp, pristine beat assault with electric glitchy discharges, filled to the brim with impressive production details.
Naturally then, from this song I quickly found myself enraptured with Hexalyne's recent debut album, Tcaresset, released by the very same label. Tcaresset contains everything I loved in "Traces Set", except it fleshes it out and extends it for the album's whole near-hour length. Songs like "Raecs Test", "Rate Sects", and "Sacsetter" are full-frontal idm bangers that are filled with beat-driven assaults and instantly become memorable on first listen. The atmospheric ambiance, as featured prominently on follow-up records Null Surfaces and Exivvaves, is still present, of course; those elements are part of Hexalyne's signature sound, after all. But these aspects play a more supplemental, supportive role in the music of Tcaresset, rather than being leading factors in the album's overall direction.
For this reason, Tcaresset is less subtle and more immediate than its often-challenging follow ups. It's like Hexalyne set out to create an album in the spirit and sound of Autechre's "Acroyearii" and "Vose In" from LP5, or perhaps Richard Devine's spastic and corrosive Cautella album from 2005, and he succeeds admirably. Despite being clearly influenced by the likes of those aforementioned legends -- the left side of idm, you might say -- Hexalyne is able to keep a distinct hold on his sound; I can always tell a Hexalyne song within five seconds of listening to it. More than anything else in the genre, an artist's ability to sound distinct from his peers is paramount and of the utmost importance; after all, too much of the genre sounds like everything else. Not the case with Hexalyne, no, and currently there's no one that does this intense Draft 7.30-esque, electrical beat barrage any better.
Hexalyne has proved to have a knack with delivering brooding, expansive closers, and "Eta Crests" is likely the best of the bunch thus far. The song plods on and expands, being a rare moment when Tcaresset settles down and calmly lulls the listener through the artist's expertly crafted distorted sonic tapestries. Once again, the real treasure of the music here is hidden in the details, however, and it's remarkable how pristinely static and synth swells can sound as they bring the album to a close.
With every listen through it all through "Eta Crests", I leave with new sounds I couldn't recall from before. As one fellow fan recently put it, to paraphrase, the music is so dense and mystifying that it can be hard to describe to others, yet it keeps you coming back to find new details. I couldn't have said it any better, to be honest. Fresh, pristine, and expertly crafted, Tcaresset is the primary reason why I'm a Hexalyne fan. Everything that's come out after has just been more icing on the cake, and lately the Hexalyne cake has become quite huge. Go listen, and then listen again. You'll hear what I'm talking about.
