Celebrating its 10th release since the inauguration in 2018, Danish community label No Technique kicks off the new year by introducing the Copenhagen producer Vizi—aka Lasse Vistisen—and his debut release, ‘Cenotes’.
Out February 26 on cassette and digitally, ‘Cenotes’ features eight immersive drone compositions, soundtracking personal experiences of awe, growth, and debilitating pain. The result is an epic and transportive release preoccupied with the passing of time and a descent into anxiety.
Vizi’s intensively evocative sound—a mixture of stretched synths and bass—is mirrored in grandiloquent track titles unfolding the story of a mind getting increasingly out of alignment. Take ‘Palms Slowly Drowned At Dawn’ as an example—a metaphor for an imagined view evoked by Vizi as a relaxation technique—which fixates on a single riff while managing to continually ramp up the intensity without ever losing its self-containment’. ‘Eating A Swan’, another example, echoes palpitations and a feeling of numbness during a simmering panic attack. Fragments of noise intersect an uneven and dark layer of drone, before gentle choir appear as light at the end of the tunnel.
On the B-side, which kicks off with Boards of Canada-emulating synth improvisations on ‘Interlude’, Vizi continues his cinematic approach. ‘Solar Plexus’ serves as an analogy for fluctuation and uncertainty, transforming subtle and chopped-up drone into epic eureka and relief. Closing off ‘Cenotes’ with ‘Constant Part 1’ and ‘Constant Part 2’, Vizi signals the breaking point of a suffering in silence with a crescendo of crushing noise, leaving wiggle room for interpretations; does ‘Cenotes’ offer a happy ending or a comedown?
2020 saw No Technique release “faith-restoring” debut albums (according to the online music mag Zenevloed’s 2020 end-of-year list) from Pauline Hogstrand and Johan Carøe, and in 2021 No Technique will expand its musical territory with new music from New Zealand and Lithuanian friends. Albums by No Technique co-founders Mikkel Oldrup and Emil Duvier are also in the pipeline.
credits
released February 26, 2021
Composed, produced and recorded by
Lasse Vistisen
Mixed by Emil Duvier and Lasse Vistisen
Mastered by Lars Kivig
Cover photo by Mattias Søndergaard
Layout by Aleksandra Machnicka
Press: Morten Bruhn
With support from DPA and Kodas cultural funds
Special thanks: Johan Carøe, Mikkel Oldrup, Emil Duvier, No Technique, Forlaget Kornmod, Jonas Torstensen, Morten Bruhn, Lars Kivig, Søren Buhl Lassen, Mattias Søndergaard, Aleksandra Machnicka, Ninna Bach, Anders Mathiasen, Tapemuzik.
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