Review: Suplington - Music For Life Cycles (I-VII)

Suplington’s new 21-minute composition is a perpetual act of motion and incompletion. The chord progressions never resolve, instead tilting between different states of suspense, actively welcoming the arpeggiations that send them into furious spirals of sound. Percussively, the track is driven by what appears to be a wood block and a shaker, which impatiently asserts the next syncopated framework when the rest of the instruments fall quiet. Synthesisers stop and then violently pulsate from nowhere. Organs linger and then disappear. There is no resting state. Music For Life Cycles is a constant process of reconfiguration, establishing constructs of tone and rhythm that chime with the mood of the current moment, only to reshape as the passing of the time renders them suddenly incompatible.

In spite of its mechanical precision, the piece emanates organic warmth. Even the electronic textures are soft to the touch and further moistened by reverb, harmonising with the piano until the timbres merge into a solitary glisten. I picture an old electronic device made from wooden chassis and naked bulbs: hand-carved pinwheels spinning through arpeggiations and chopping up the glow that radiates from organ drones, as the percussion clacks and rustles like the churn of interconnecting cogs and winches. The patterns are stark and remarkable. I gaze into the sequence of synchronised rotations and throbbing lights, ingesting as much as I can before the shape switches again.