Oron Janiv - Easel (2023)

Debut raft of Buchla Easel synth recordings from Basel-based sound artist Janiv Oron.

Chasing up the themes and aesthetics of Noémi Büchl’s mutable modular suite ‘Matière’ on Swiss label Light of Other Days, Oron’s first solo album, proper, follows his nose for rugged rhythms and the sort of timbres that make the mouth water. Over the course of its six tracks he gets right inside the machine’s mind to eke out its singular voice, deployed in various forms oscillating from bucolic sci-fi scenery to grubbing, Afro-rhythmic syncopation, and bolshier technoid primitivism.

Key to proceedings is Oron’s background in hip hop and dance musics, which patently informs the record’s rhythmic procession in its highlights of thistly, thumb piano-like rhythmelody in ‘Gold Yellow’, and with a swingeing electro-steppers heft on ‘Black Brown’ possibly destined for experimental club DJs, while ‘Purple Black’ sends us reeling with what sounds like a possessed Sufi ritual music, all blazing horns and dervish drums.