Aphexia - The Gates (2017)

After two years of intense musical soul-searching and experimentation, APHEXIA's second full-length album, THE GATES, is finally here to enchant and surprise you.

With the multifaceted and elaborate material of this release, Ophelia (APHEXIA/ECSTASPHERE) continues her very personal musical journey and showcases a perceptibly matured sound combined with more complex and daring songwriting.

While some of the tracks, such as "Battered Heart" or "Frames" draw on the more conventional IDM sound of the previous album, others process and play with various other influences in a more obvious and intensional way. There is a lot of referential material throughout THE GATES, taking up the transparent and wayward sound of Portishead imbued with guitars and drum patterns reminiscent of Massive Attack's Mezzanine and 100th Window era, while with many 5/4 rhythms, polyrhythmic beats and surprising pattern turns, the rhythmic structuralizing of the compositions as well as some of the hooklines of this album are based on one of Ophelia's core influences: Progressive Rock.

In addition to this versatile pool of noticeable influences, THE GATES has a very self-referential quality to it, including "Breathe Reprise", a self-ironically heartbreaking collection of all the melancholic vocal/lyrical material of the previous APHEXIA album, and with "A.ffective Cure" an unexpected new take on "A Cure", which was one of the most well-received tracks of the debut ECSTASPHERE album, Feed Your Head. Motives from the first and last tracks of THE GATES, "The Threshold" and "Made Of Glass" are repeated and alienated throughout the whole album, themes are being taken up and broken open. THE GATES is a very challenging yet witty Electronica album, experimental yet extremely accessible. For the very first time, Ophelia incorporates humor into her music, which makes for an exciting new compositional dimension for the recipient to unravel and decode. Join APHEXIA on a journey in three parts, a journey through the gates of the present and the past into an uncertain future.