A chilly ambient immersion takes hold throughout the microtubule encoded memory EP, the newest release from Cerpintxt (or Alaa), an artist from Cairo, Egypt. Along with Ruben Sonnoli, they comprise an audiovisual collaborative performance with explorations into dark ambient, avant-garde jazz, drone, and neo-classical — propelled by this stellar EP, which is described as “a longform study in systematic harmonic erosion.”
A wordless, ghostly vocal presence lingers with haunting immersion on the EP’s title track, escalating with chilling fervency past the first minute. These vocals beckon like a ghost trying to call out to the living, cautioning for something on a dreary winter day. A more reserved spoken-word composure emerges, overlapping with intrigue as caressing layers build into spacey intrigue. Sporadic swells intensify into the tenth minute, leading a riveting second half where cavernous vocal haunts and ghostly, crackling textural ambience converge for an oddly enduring beauty.
The EP also includes the track “dweller in the eye,” recorded live with Ruben Sonnoli. Hushed spoken-word infusions and subtle, creaky piano lead into a warming backing as the track progresses, sounding like a possessed procession from the video game Control. The microtubule encoded memory EP is a showcase in atmospheric immersion from Cerpintxt and Ruben Sonnoli.
Look for another track to release alongside the EP’s cassette version, shipping on October 30th. Cerpintxt elaborates further on the release’s sound:
“Microtubule encoded memory is a longform study in systematic harmonic erosion, materialised within a wall of cascading and spectrally smeared vocal layers, retrograding guitar pulses and speech-driven composition. A corrosive vocal terrain that is the backdrop against which skeletal frequency swells flicker. The cyclical narrative bleeds into an exploration of phonetic entropy mechanisms of auto-composition; voices without bodies reflecting off each other like a recurring dream.”
