Finest Hour co-founder Onirik kicked off his own Garage Hermétique imprint last year as a home for a broadening spectrum of sounds. Its second release ‘Darkness Light Darkness‘ sees a collaboration with an old university friend Minoki, who brings a certain sense of musicality to the partnership with their keyboard skills matching up well with Onirik’s knack for pared back house music. This EP comes after an expectedly dry January release wise and cuts through the thirst like a frosty bottle of paracetamol edged IPA on the lips, eternally welcome and lovingly savoured.
There is something about sad house music that is wonderfully indulgent and the strangely warm but blue melancholic tones of opener ‘Multipolar‘ makes you want to grab it in both hands and rub it all over your face. It is urgent at its core and shifts through a series of moods. Unresolved chords and skittish percussion are then sheared off by the most unusual juxtaposition of a sound.
"Golden Age Pheasant takes you on a merry-go-round of audio, drenched in expanding psychedelic synths that happily ping-pong you off the padded walls of your choice in utter delirium."
Try to picture what you’d hear in a nightmare when you’re in a late for work situation but find your car’s start motor has been replaced by a large angry pig as you repeatedly turn the key. After that sharp awakening, the track finishes with a sense of resolution, through its watery scales and minor bluesy tone that just hovers in the background. Let’s make no bones about it, this is a fantastic lead track end to end.
After this, ‘Golden Age Pheasant‘ takes you on a merry-go-round of audio, drenched in expanding psychedelic synths that happily ping-pong you off the padded walls of your choice in utter delirium. Then we are treated to two different flavours of title track ‘Darkness Light Darkness‘.
The original version conjures up images of Ondo Fudd’s ‘Blue Dot‘ with a little dash of Mei Tahat’s free thinking ambient for seasoning, where the familiar clanking of mountainside bells playing off held strings and Call Super’s fondness for a sole clarinet is swapped out for organic piano improvisation and drifting, evolving textures. This is then built on by Onirik’s alternate take, which features a kick that has enough punch to blow out a candle from a speaker across the room, anchoring the fly away original into something entirely more corporeal.
Darkness Light Darkness is out now via Garage Hermetique, order a vinyl copy from Phonica.
A1. Multipolar
A2. Golden Age Pheasant
B1. Darkness Light Darkness (Onirik redub)
B2. Darkness Light Darkness
Discover more about Oni-Ki and Garage Hermetique on Inverted Audio.