REVIEW: Tellus – Shrouded in Sun EP
Tellus’ Shrouded in Sun EP follows on from a raft of lovely releases across Akuratyde’s Modern Conveniences label over the past few years. The label’s delicate, lush, melodic drum & bass explorations show a continued affinity with autonomic and share its interest in the more spacious, idiosyncratic, contemplative, and bittersweet possibilities of drum & bass. This ‘focus on music that is heartfelt, emotive, and memorable’ feels somewhat out of step with broader trends within the post-autonomic milieu and those at the fringes of drum & bass.
From, say, the atonal austerity of UVB-76's blackened techno-inflected brutalism to the reinvigoration and reinterpretation of jungle through the streamlined, aggressive breaks increasingly prevalent in Samurai Music’s output, or the twitchy, anxious dread of Shiken Hanzo and the Zodiac Music label, the overall mood is often rather ominous and menacing. With its colourful, playful, and brightly-lit sound, the music of Shrouded in Sun stands in stark contrast to these trends and makes for such a happy, refreshing listen.
As suggested in the title, Shrouded in Sun is bathed in warmth. Its tones and textures animate glossy simulacra of sunset vistas and wide, open roads. Meandering at speed through Tellus’ composite terrain of nostalgic, affective, and simulated fantasy, his music evokes many of the aesthetics of cyberpunk, but in a way that eschews the genre’s more noir-ish and dystopian aspects in favour of articulating possibilities of aesthetic pleasure and intimacy within the overlapping layers of online, mediated and ‘real’ life.
The opening track ‘Home’ sees an arpeggiated synth lead soar over a tight, mellow groove and lush atmospheric pads, it conjures visions of youthful summer nights spent driving aimlessly through neon-lit urban sprawls.
‘Jovian Dreams’ then runs this theme, with subdued breaks and some bassline funk decorated with hazy vocal snippets, little synth lines, and washes of static again drawing on images of warmth and speed.
‘Shrouded in Sun’ moves at a slower pace, ticking over through a filtered synth melody before opening into a piano chord progression. The track drifts somewhat, but only insofar as it allows space for a pretty little melody to come into focus, flourish and drift away again.
‘Lens Flare’ then closes out the EP with its relaxed half-time feel, glitchy lead, and strolling bassline, it simply rolls through without asking you to do much beyond sitting back, relaxing, and basking in its warmth.
Shrouded in Sun is perhaps Tellus’ most cohesive and fully developed release to date. Its balmy renderings of cityscapes and focus on the emotive responses journeys through such spaces overflowing with neon, visual noise, and movement. While continuing the long tradition within drum & bass of finding comfort in the ever-increasing speed of modern life. Alongside Modern Conveniences’ back catalog and recent Modcast mix series, Shrouded in Sun adds to a label that is fast building its own little ecosystem that shows the vitality of autonomic drum & bass.