Shelley's On Zenn-la

About

For Shelley's on Zenn-La, Oliver Coates designs a complex of bending truths and reverse walkways to vernal state. Open ears can peer down hidden aux channel corridor, while melodic patterns present two-way mirrors to rooms of other retinal color. An endless euphoria is just beneath the dance floorboards of Shelley', and an inquisitiveness unencumbered by the institution of knowledge surrounding its frame and inhabitant. Shelley's on Zenn-La was made between the Elephant and Castle neighborhood of London and a future dreamscape. In this realm out of time and space, Shelley's (Laserdome) – a once-legendary late-80's/early-90's nightclub in the industrial town of Stoke-on-Trent in the north of England – can simultaneously exist on the fictional planet of Zenn-La, and can house a devotional, alien ritual of early UK rave culture, pioneering IDM, and deep minimalism. Much of the album's construction extends from specific, self-imposed ambitions; particular palettes applied to individual creative idea. These limitations become limitless manifestations of theme: two bass lines running in parallel (one cello, one synth), synthesized waveforms phasing with bowed acoustic drones and chord, synth sequences in nonstandard tuning sitting against folk melody in standard tuning. Coates made a lot of the music for Shelley’s in Renoise, composing drum sequences in hexadecimal numbers and pencil drawn waveforms and cementing specificity in the intricate, intelligent dance machination. Some of Shelley's tracks veer into and across FM synthesi. “I like hearing how one tone is enriched by another tone modulating the first, resulting in gleaming sets of new harmonic,” says Coate, “I started thinking about placing live cello playing into a chain of antagonism resulting in sounds I found beautiful.” This instinct to poetically process sounds in real life (“sitting on the tube, thinking: I’d remove the low end on that, compress that, add reverb to that”) give Shelley's an exploratory feel, both guided and unbound, autodidactic by undoing. .

via Last.fm

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