Review Summary: drum & bass raincloud, wash me away
As heard on last year's excellent
Earth Prism, Illuvia (aka Ludvig Cimbrelius)'s integration of tempestuous breakbeats into gauzy ambient cloudscapes is one of the most refreshing happenings in atmospheric drum and bass today, and the man has apparently declined to rest on his laurels since then. His latest record
Mauna Kea picks up where
Earth Prism left off, serving up all the same textures that made that last record so compelling, but subtly adjusting the balance of his central components. Where
Earth Prism's central attraction lay in the beautifully staged struggle its frenetic beats faced to break out of the aether,
Mauna Kea's percussive side complements rather than competes with its ambient washout. We hear this exemplified on the first track proper "Where Clouds Dissolve Into Sky (Origin)", where the breaks decline to rampage over the track's tranquil layerings, opting instead for an ebb-and-flow approach that serves above all to stir the atmosphere; the following highlight "Cennetin Vaadi" goes for a more climatic structure, but here too, one feels reassurance rather than volatility upon hearing the beat find its footing and clatter away. The album makes sacrifices in its potential for kinetic peaks – there's certainly nothing as electrifying as
Earth Prism's "Tectonic Shift" – but it ends up a better-rounded package, avoiding the dead air of predecessor's extended ambient forays and establishing a healthy codependence between its active and passive dimensions. Throw in the occasional stylistic departure, as per "Blue Rays (Refraction)"'s disarmingly buoyant dub odyssey, and
Mauna Kea's 80-minute runtime trickles away like so much dust on a rainy pavement — as do I.
