- Before making Nothing Is Real, Celestial Trax pressed the reset button on his own practice. In the years leading up to this album, the New York-based producer—real name Joni Judén—released a string of EPs for labels such as Rinse and PTP (formerly Purple Tape Pedigree). Most of those tracks were futuristic but functional, drawing on grime, hip-hop and experimental club music. On his debut album, those reference points have disappeared over the horizon. Nothing Is Real arrives at a singular sound that unifies spellbinding audio collage with synth wizardry, club rhythms and—occasionally—guitars.
The album is full of seductive found sounds that invite us to explore their contours. "Not In Control" recalls the most poignant moments on DJ Shadow's Entroducing....., with a clip of hypnotizing movie dialogue—"everything going to be alright"—accompanied by piano strokes and yawning synthesizer tones. "Black Serpent" has shades of shoegaze, with a mournful chord progression that gives way to a solo keyboard arrangement swimming in woozy ambient noises and reverb. Judén's versatility as a producer and songwriter is impressive—not only he does he have a sharp ear when it comes to mining samples, but he can write melodies that are full of feeling and agile rhythms with a soft touch.
Most striking, though, is his way of evoking ambiguous moods that give the album a cinematic feeling. In the last couple of years we've seen more and more artists using the vernacular of club music—drum machines, samples and synthesizers—to make stuff that not only sounds good, but actually conjures up specific images and emotional states. From the 14-minute audioplay that put Amnesia Scanner on the map, to Elysia Crampton's Demon City, which seemed to illustrate a world of the same name, to the three-dimensional blockbuster sound design of labels like Infinite Machine or Janus, these projects are as poetic as they are musical. This style is still going through growing pains, however, with many of its adherents stuck to Hollywood sound design tropes. Breaking glass and twisting metal are what anger sounds like; high-definition bass drops are dramatic plot inflections; dissonant tones create tension; algorithmic noise make us think of the future. What's nice about Nothing Is Real is it uses sounds in an illustrative fashion without leaning on the audio clichés drilled into our heads by the institution of theatrical sound effects.
The album isn't just heady ambient tracks. "Crushhh" is like a disassociated rap instrumental, with 808 snares snapping in a cybernetic jet stream. "100 Proof" has a solid foundation of sub bass and an arsenal of metallic percussion, with synths that are in turns optimistic and foreboding. "The Day We Died," built on an overdriven bass guitar riff, is more post-rock than post-club. It may sound scattershot, but Celestial Trax finds a unifying factor by focusing on mood and texture, whether he's arranging guitars, field recordings or both.
トラックリスト01. New York Is A Desert
02. Crushh
03. Reflection
04. Godless
05. Into The Night
06. Pleasure Through Pain
07. Not In Control
08. 100 Proof
09. Black Serpent
10. Youth
11. Manifestation Of Delusion
12. The Day We Died