It feels like all my recent Aythar coverage has been leading to this, The God Particle. Yeah, it's Mr. Tamás' most recent effort, but it's his first proper album on ...txt as well. Considering the rarefied air Lee Norris' print currently occupies within ambient techno circles (painfully limited CD runs help), that's no small feat. Not to mention the compilation Dream Of Stars from a year ago served as something of a primer to the Aythar stylee, should you have missed the Carpe Sonum Records debut or his prior self-released material. So while The God Particle is technically his seventh full-length, I can't help but think of it as the first in a new stage for his career: from outright obscurity to ambient techno mini-fame ...which remains pretty darn obscure nonetheless.
Right, I may just be building an idea of “Aythar's Next Chapter” in my head. For sure many artists develop their sound over time, but it's left me with an expectation that The God Particle should sound significantly different and evolved from earlier works. Let's hear what Mr. Tamás has up his sleeve in the right here, right now. Or from last year, The God Particle apparently digitally self-released in 2016 before given this spiffy CD remastering. Well, doesn't that just shoot my narrative in the kneecaps.
Fortunately, Aythar does add some new wrinkles to his sound with this album, so I'm sated on that front. Opener The Sirens Of Titan is all kinds of dreamy, spacey ambience, with sweeping distant pads, burbling arps and spritely synths floating about the sonic ether. The titular follow-up gets in on that ambient techno front, starting out with a minimalist pitter-patter rhythm before escalating, echoing arps join the fray. As the track develops, it threads the line between mint Berlin-School modulations and light IDM manipulations without ever committing to either side. Meanwhile, Return To The Moon gets its dubby psy-chill vibe on, coming off like a long-lost track that didn't quite make it on one of Ultimae Records' Fahrenheit Project compilations.
If it's not clear yet, there be variety on The God Particle, Aythar seemingly trying out various flavours of ambient chill music both new and old. Healing Nature reaches way back to the olden days of Hearts Of Space (without getting too deep in the New Age sap), while Arctic Night's near eleven-minute runtime flits through some good ol' Fax+ ambient techno, and kinda' reminds me of Asura's Galaxies in the process. Molecular Flow almost comes off like something Orbital might have made if they ever contributed to Apollo Records, Pulsar like a latter-era cut from Ultimae (dub-glitch, yo'), and Mission To The Stars... I'd make the Sonic Voyagers call-back, but that might be too obscure even for ambient techno dudes.
Front to back though, The God Particle is solid material, mixing old space ambient with psy-chill and IDM aesthetics. Perhaps not the most original sound on the market, but Aythar does it right by my biased standards.
ACE TRACKS:
The Sirens Of Titan
Return To The Moon
Pulsar
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