As If - 10 Views from a Different Angle

Release date: 4/8/22

As If is Kennenth Werner, who has spent the last ten-plus years developing his own unique strand of ambient dub and dub techno, and his debut for Carpe Sonum manages to bridge the worlds of Namlook, echo, and reverb in a stunning, virtuosic display sure to dazzle the cochlea. One might well call Werner something of a minimalist, as he effectively does so much with seemingly so little: a tightly-stretched weave of looped aural gauze here, an infinitely-mapped substrata of atmospherica there, until the listener is essentially swallowed in the luscious galactic beds of sonic velvet Werner augurs. Each of these “views” on hand establishes an interlocking series of pulse and shimmer that opens up breathtaking worlds, from the mutating theremin-esque shudderscape of “View 5”, all preening menace and abject wonder, to the newfangled analog bubblebath of “View 7”, ingeniously reimagining Klaus Schulze in a sensory deprivation tank of arch dub pulsations, Werner’s creations alternatively flow, liquify, and seethe, often in equal measure. This is music of moods and transient states, of cold, wintry evenings looking up at skies alight with shifting aurora borealia, of plunges into abyssal depths and finding oneself lost in the farthest reaches of space and psyche. Much like stylistic colleague Yagya, Werner’s stark, greyscale bromides breach aesthetics both of the heaven- and navel-gazing variety, tonal crosscurrents of effervescent sound that thrust you willingly into its multiverse, As If your very existence depended on it.