After a handful of releases that explored noisy, quasiindustrial techno, Mattila here deviates into a more abstract, melancholy mode with A Tension. His creative process involves experimenting “to see how far I can push a sound with a pretty lofi setup. Improvisation and limitations are part of the thing that makes it interesting.” This approach yields riveting dividends right from the start on A Tension. On “Condensity,” the sparse pinging and distant, muted beats commingle with what sounds like rough wind or waves, hinting at the Arctic vibes that Biosphere conjured on Substrata. It’s at once chill and chilling, tranquil and unsettling. “Between The Hours” places spindly, woody beats beneath a dramatic sweep of synthetic strings, ebbing and flowing like Fripp & Eno‘s monumental “An Index Of Metals.” “Neverendless” might be even more redolent of the North Pole than “Condensity,” its severely minimal isolationist ambience suggesting Mick Harris‘ nonemorecold Lull or Thomas Köner‘s Permafrost. On “Manual Litany I,” Mattila takes what sounds like a sentimental synth melody and smears it into a mantra of compelling drudgery. He notes that the track draws inspiration from William Basinski, who’s famous for his series of profoundly poignant Disintegration Loops albums.

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Information Pollution was born out of restraints. After moving into a new house with little space to set up his studio properly, Strategy (Portland producer Paul Dickow) could only work with a few devices at a time. He’d acquired an old Akai reeltoreel tape deck with tube preamps from his father, who’d recently cleaned out his own studio. Using radios, homemade effects boxes, and the tape deck, Strategy recorded these sound collages live to tape, without touching any synths or deploying any samples. ‘I discovered a lot of ghostly shortwave sounds,‘ Dickow says, ‘but also ambulance, parking, and school bus dispatch channels on forgotten frequencies that I think might have been once used for police or broadcast TV.’

The result falls somewhere between Philip Jeck‘s eroding turntable symphonies and William Basinski‘s poignantly decaying Disintegration Loops. Dickow relates that he uses the term ‘Information Pollution’ to classify ‘any spam, broadcast saturation, junk mail, invasion of unwanted information (that enters) the socialemotional public realm.’

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Like its predecessor, Hyperboreal was made with the minimum of fuss. Recorded using just one semi-modular synth – the boutique and sadly discontinued Ekdahl Polygamist – and a handful of pedals, the album came together in just a few days while Fogliata was staying with Giuseppe Tillieci (aka Neel – famed mastering engineer and one-half of Voices From The Lake) at his apartment in Rome. The Polygamist’s combination of modular flexibility with the aesthetic cohesion of a complete instrument was the inspirational spark which set the album in motion.

“I fell in love with it from the first sight,” says Fogliata of the synth. “Aesthetics are very important to me, if I don’t like the way a synth looks like I can’t get anything from it. Just like when meeting a nice person but there’s no physical attraction, it can be a good friendship, nice conversations but ‘love’ is missing, and making music is making love so this aspect has a huge influence on creativity. Being surrounded by beauty makes me feel better and reinforces the positive feedback.”

As its title suggests, this is an album for colder climates, for stark and inhospitable landscapes. Its opening side is tough going at times, a truly unsettling void of vaporous tones, a blizzard of sound refusing to coalesce, refusing to make sense. Slowly though, Hyperboreal opens itself up to the listener, emerging patiently from an abyssal darkness into a beauty as still, as sharp and as breathtaking as an Arctic dawn.

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The Loud Silence is the result of those explorations, an accompanied deep-dive into childhood memory, social history and the roots of psychedelia. Recorded indoors and outdoors, half-way up mountains and on the edge of the Mediterranean sea, the record is meditative but also powerful. Dozzy has distilled his ideas into an incredibly intimate sound, one that invites an inverted sort of exploration, pushing you further and further into your own head. Each track maintains an inviolable central pulse, while delicate, fluttering sounds hint at vast spaces that might open up at any minute – they’re just waiting for you to connect with them. Field recordings hover below the resonating harps, adding to the mysterious atmosphere.

Anyone who has followed Dozzy’s work over the years, whether the celebrated Voices from the Lake collaboration with Neel, the otherworldly mixes he’s done for MNML SSGS and electronique.it, or particularly his album of Bee Mask remixes for the Spectrum Spools label, will see that The Loud Silence is a continuation of a life-long fascination with sound and its potential to bring people, times and places together. It’s one more stunning chapter in a musical career that has never shirked the task of digging deep into the sounds that move us.

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