Chris Carter, an outstanding musician whose immeasurable contribution to electronic music has already earned him a place in history years ago, returns with
Chris Carter – Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 (2018)
Chris Carter, an outstanding musician whose immeasurable contribution to electronic music has already earned him a place in history years ago, returns with Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 – his first solo album in 17 years. The release is primarily based on sessions with modular synthesisers during 2010-2017, and Carter admits that it’s a very personal record, created with a certain relaxing and therapeutic effect. However, relaxivity comes side by side with persuasiveness here, causing chemical reactions in listeners’ brains – and an immediate sound addiction, too.
If you had to describe Chemistry Lessons in only three words, that сould be cohesiveness, laconism and excellence. 25 tracks – or periodic elements, if you want – intentionally overcome an inertia of extended modular synth composition. Carter provides a variety of short musical statements instead, not just sketches, but full-fledged stories, where retro sci-fi sounds meet modern industrial beats and mechanical inevitability merges with human organics.
Needless to say that record’s seeming minimalism has nothing to do with masterful musical creativity. Carter works with very short and ear-catching motives, incorporating them into a colorful kaleidoscope of complex arrangements. Whether that be thick multi-layered electronic pulsations and arpeggios (Blissters, Modularity, Lab Test to name a few), abstract collages (Noise Floor, Rehndim) or metal sound landscapes (Dust & Spiders, Post Industrial), music maintains that unexceptionally distinctive sense of space where even the tiniest semantic element plays its irreplaceable part. Haunting synthetic-like voices (Cernubicua, Ghosting, Time Curious Glows), excerpts from Carter’s longtime field recordings collection, add the final flourish, creating a strong sensation of watching someone’s lives through a glass, darkly – they come and go, being just echoes, ghosts of the past, random flashes in neverending radio noises.
Playing with shades and undertones, putting together a harmonious sound mosaic, Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons prove conclusively that brilliant scientific research applied to the diverse electronic music field shows impressive results – and there’re still infinite possibilities for the further creative experiments, especially for the true master.
We had an electric guitar, a banjo, a washboard, a drum, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored gadgets, and also cowboy hats, a