Honestly, sometimes I feel like there are reviews that could be replaced by that meme of Vince McMahon becoming increasingly excited.
It’s an album of instrumental electronic music! It’s heavily influenced by kosmische Musik and psychedelia! The songs have numbers instead of names! They’re all mixed into one long track! It’s a limited-edition cassette-only release!
All of which is to say: you probably know already whether this is something you’re going to enjoy or not, and it is very much in the centre of the Venn diagram of things that I do.
Charlie Butler is the psychonaut behind this journey to the centre of the subconscious, building on a hypnotically minimal theme that verges just on the melodic side of drone and makes small movements and variations to seismic effect. Rhythms pulsate, bringing with them a heady heaviness and then light ecstatic relief – like the floatiness you feel after carrying someone on your shoulders. The chirps and trills that flit by in the background are like the traces of passing starships, the menacing vastness of the infinite in the reverb and sustain.
Taking its name from the Pocket Operator – the drum machine providing the rhythmic pulse that unifies the album – it comes in at just under half an hour, which is on the short side for this kind of minimalist meditation, but it very much rewards a bit of dedicated listening. Close the curtains, close your eyes, and open your mind to the pulsating possibilities of the inner cosmos.
Pocket Dimension is out now