If you recall our review of bhed’s Girl and Parrot EP, we were singularly shocked at his already well-developed long form take on the intersections of the dubstep, dub techno and ambient genres; often interweaving each genre’s aesthetic data across each tracks duration. With his second release on his homebrew label of Hedonism, bhed continues exploring the outer boundaries that exists between the three genres for his Goldmund EP. Whereas ‘Girl and Parrot’ were relative strolls; between seven to eight minutes, the Goldmund EP moves at a granular pace, allowing new elements to be introduced, reduced and refracted into swirling motifs as newer elements fade into the foreground.
The sixteen minute opener, ‘Jardin’, enters with a soft and sepia-toned organ melody that is treated to varying degrees of cathedral reverb, building itself up as a pointillist sound collage of tones that allies itself into some more akin to installation sound art than dancefloor trip. By the mid-way point, the elements evaporate into dubspace and a stately dub techno march ensues with submerged aquaponics and skeletal percussion. Continually evolving, the third movement of ‘Jardin’ find a more upbeat and melodic counterpoint takes form against the elliptical dub techno chord washes. It is all subsumed however as ‘Jardin’ closes by folding within itself with a woozy tape loop drone coda.
If ‘Jardin’ is yin then ‘Brücke’ is yang given its more floor focused outlook with a Peverelist Jarvik Mindstate era percussion palate of hollow snares and careening, glitch-like hi-hats. With a supremely sublime low end heft, ‘Brücke’ moves with intent rather than oozing out when compared to ‘Jardin’. Closing the EP is the humid and ornate opium infused Miami morning come-down ‘Goldmund’. Built out of a languid guitar phrase, hissing steam, and various field recordings, its a track that is warmly inviting for hypnagogic states yet has an implicit sinisterness that could been heard across the 2004 SOMA related side project Ginnungagap’s Remeindre LP.
