Cascade – Sebastian Reynolds (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

The full album, Canary, might be a way off still (put a mark on 29th September in your diary), but thankfully, Sebastian Reynolds gives us a new single, Cascade, to hold us over. Known as a creator of tracks that wander into beat-driven dance territory and also explore more fractured and fragile soundscapes, Cascade takes in something of both ends of the sonic spectrum.

Slowly building out of chiming beats, eerie electronica, and spoken word, it slows adds more robust, future-tribal drum patterns, slashes and slivers of doppler-effected sonics, adding weight and groove, dance eclectism and digital elegance as it goes; it is a song which seems to pass from one realm to another as it heads towards its final destination.

Always able to offer something new, different, and unique, Sebastian Reynold’s music is also challenging. Not in that boring and bombastic way that rock music claims, then gets in your face but then has nothing new to say, but articulately and eloquently, starting conversations about what music is and where it might go next, about the intrigue and reward of making music along the blurred lines between sounds and styles and delivering a killing blow to the notion of musical genres and labels, once and for all.

I don’t remember electronic music having this music to say in the past. I guess with artists such as Sebastian Reynolds at the helm, the art form is indeed coming of age.