Perila – How Much Time It Is Between You and Me? (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:03 minutes | 435 MB | Genre: Electronic, Ambient
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Smalltown Supersound
Recorded while living off-grid in a French village, Perila’s debut album proper is a dissociated, erotically charged throb of curling vocals, glassy synths, creaking environmental concrète, brushed jazz drums and submerged, dubwise subs. Like early Grouper spliced with Kenji Kawai’s ominous “Ring” soundtrack, then re-assembled by DJ Spooky, Jake Muir and Vladislav Delay >> it’s properly time warping gear that’s ineffably beautiful without being precious or cute.
Since moving to Berlin from St. Petersburg six years ago, Aleksandra Zakharenko has developed a unique hue in the ambient music spectrum. Leagues from the club-adjacent ambient posturing that her adopted city has centered in recent years, Zakharenko’s sonic universe is sensual, poetic and narcotic, using elements of musique concrète, drone, dub and noise to reflect a mushy sensitivity that’s as mysterious as it is tangible. Her sound has been refined by constant collaboration and her work with Berlin Community Radio, where she assembled regular podcast WET (Weird Erotic Tension) – a fusion of surrealist ambient sound and erotic ASMR poetry. And while “How Much Time it is Between You and Me?” has mostly shelved the spoken word, this muggy air of eroticism still circles her silky drones and subtle rhythmic strokes.
Pinkish clouds of granulated harmony float above a groaning modernist cityscape, expressed in subtly manipulated environmental recordings and occasional rhythms. On ‘Time Date’, the trace of a beat emerges with the spectral presence of a phantom limb, bubbling eerily beneath muffled, deadpan vocals. Long, psychedelic centerpiece ‘You Disappear You Find Yourself Again’, levitates fluttering drones that eventually slip from the pineal into neck, activating jazzy fumbles that point towards NYC’s long-overlooked illbient zone. ‘Memories of Grass’ takes another left turn, sounding like Grouper’s blurry “Way Their Crept” stickytaped to Eno’s fwd-thinking ’80s FM synth experiments.
The album’s gently vibrating mass of jellyfish hues, vocal shards, and uncannily amplified small sound straddles a fine line between the unresolved nature of her sound and a more poised, certain style of agoraphobic pastoralism, as though she’s absorbing the sights outside her window, while keeping her thoughts intimately indoors. From the evocative track titles to their textured strokes, everything drips with a poetic, synaesthetic sensuality, articulating her sound at its most effective – formulating a perfect listen for anyone who craves the unruly, radical sprawl of art in all its unpredictable, fleshy realism.
Tracklist:
1. Air Like Velvet (03:03)
2. Time Date (02:42)
3. You Disappear You Find Yourself Again (07:31)
4. Untilted (03:43)
5. Blanket (06:00)
6. Memories of Grass (04:16)
7. Enchiz (05:15)
8. Backyard Echo (00:52)
9. Vaxxine (02:04)
10. Cradle (04:44)
11. Fallin Into Space (04:59)
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