Memotone - Fever of the World (2024) [Hi-Res]

An ascendant Memotone in superb 4th world-building form, inflected with the gorgeously rendered Jazz forms seeping into typically asymmetric dub noise, modal, and ambient concrète elements that also made his turns for TTT and Sähkö so widely beloved. Proper soft-landing gear, tipped if you’re into Arve Henriksen, ECM, Flanger, Conjoint.

The Bristolian multi-instrumentalist terraformer’s music is ideal for the album format, as with his ace ‘Tollard’ for TTT in ’23, here taking the wider canvas to knit a world of inspirations - from Jon Hassell and ECM to jazz, folk and Ambient - in billowing tapestries detailed with filigree stitching and emotive nuance. It’s another prime example of why this guy should be scoring films, seamlessly merging original instrumentation with finessed sound design in ways that say it without saying it, by establishing atmospheric and emotive conditions that lure us right into his world.

Now 13 years since they debuted on Black Acre, Memotone’s sound has progressively evolved away from any dancefloor urges to an imaginary plane and place disjointed from time or place. With the guiding spirit of Jon Hassell and his wistful microtonal sax in the air, Memotone gently unravels the record from the soft haze of strums recalling Ernest Hood’s nostalgia-jogging bliss in ‘When the Bakery Has What You Want, and It’s Cheap’, into a pocket of Porter Ricks-like ambient dub noise with ‘Circle of Ants’, and out onto the high planes drift of ‘Catherine, On Fire’, a longer piece that allows his expansive magic to really seep intimately.

‘Following’ continues into the hushed nether niches of the mind, with a sparing marimba melody glancing over sub-bass stepping stones into luxurious ECM headiness, whilst library-like vignettes of synthy wist and underwater jazz lead into the light-bending sublime of ‘The Bus’ and a kiss-off of BoC-ish wow and flutter keys and pads ‘Fever of the World’ signs off with a pulpy cinematic flourish.

Tracklist:
1-1. Memotone - Catherine, On Fire (08:24)
1-2. Memotone - Circle of Ants (03:15)
1-3. Memotone - Following (08:05)
1-4. Memotone - Practical Joke (02:48)
1-5. Memotone - The Bus (07:07)
1-6. Memotone - When the Bakery Has What You Want, and it's Cheap (03:42)
1-7. Memotone - Too Much Syrup (00:40)
1-8. Memotone - Trees Bullied by the Wind (02:06)
1-9. Memotone - Fever of the World (04:41)