Bleep

There has always been a grand, cinematic energy emanating from the musical world Rival Consoles has cultivated. From the icy landscapes of 2013’s Odyssey EP to the dramatic narrative scope of Persona in 2018, his compositions dive into wells of emotion, sparking the imagination. His latest album, Now Is, reaches a peak in this evolutionary catharsis, moving from the technological mediation of his previous contemporary dance score Overflow into something more open and reflective of nature.

Now Is feels concerned with the present moment: impossible to neatly explain in all its complexity, yet still expressed through high energy, lacerating electrical arcs, and calmer, oceanic synth melodies. Four to the floor club beats are submerged under swathes of organic layers of synths in a superposition of techno euphoria and the bittersweet, detuned sound Rival Consoles is known for.

This range is explored in songs like ‘Eventually’, where cold air meets heartwarming swells, its stutters revolving like the beacon of a lighthouse, and exploding like a geyser. Meanwhile, the gyroscopic ‘World Turns’ exhales and hollers, screeches like a train on the tracks, glitches and mutates, and snaps right back into its purring bassline. Trickles of glass shards sweep through clockwork in ‘Echoes’, moving like water over the jazz influenced swing drums of ‘A Warning’.

Asking an open-ended question that could be answered with lamentation or celebration, Now Is reminds us that the present moment is fleeting, but Rival Consoles captures it with the full spectrum of human emotion at his fingertips.