Review: Arovane - Ve Palor

Uwe Zahn was right to wait patiently. No doubt he considered forcing out Ve Palor in its entirety back in 2002, when its first tracks were initially conceived – instead, he allowed the record to slip out of creative hibernation on its own accord, despite the fact that it would take a decade for Zahn’s world to align itself into the conditions that would gift the album’s eventual conception. Some of these pieces came together at the turn of the millennium, whereas others were produced as recently as Spring this year. Yet while his sound may be one of gentle, flickering fragmentation – like nature documentaries played back on a scratched up DVD, or flowers buds yawning through badly co-ordinated stop-motion animation – the ideas feel fluidly and organically birthed, possessing an album-spanning cohesion that renders the lengthy creative process utterly insignificant.

Ve Palor often feels like a malfunctioning digital render of his previous work; there are still those cascades of soft synthesiser that skip between notes like skimming pebbles, and drum sounds that sound like plosive mouth pops and expelled pockets of oxygen, yet they’re presented within a frame of glitch and faltered steps. Tempo and rhythm jerk as micro-moments are lost to the void of digital error, and Zahn’s rippling textures are sent bouncing off the sharp corners of crumpled beats and unexpected buzz. Autechre feels like a prominent reference point, although where that particular duo spin a decidedly alien and exaggerated web of sound, Arovane retains a certain mercurial flow within the tiny skips and hiccups; there is melody that tumbles like waterfalls over the jagged surfaces, and while I feel utterly lost within the intangible tumble of sound at points, I am lulled by the beauty that fights to retain its shape within the spasms of broken pixel.