English electronic music producer Ital Tek has released his new album Outland. The title belays the story that is being told by this album of a world unto its own, far out in some untouched and beautiful place, beyond the destructive reach of man.
Ital Tek has come a long with from his first record in the late 2000’s. Six albums on, his music has evolved from glitchy and dark experimental music to now very measured, often beatless electronic compositions that draw you under their spell with tension and release that swirl around you like a hurricane.
The album is as complete and smooth a record you will hear this year. Cohesion may be an overused word from me, but it captures what Ital Tek has done here. The songs glide effortlessly from one song to the next, guiding us along this journey through time and space beyond the reaches of what humans know. It feels like we are traveling into different dimensions and realties that start to fall away and fold into one another.
The songs are often quite dreamy, but sometimes they can clash and startle like on the gritty “Deadhead” where we have encountered some sort of other species and are running through alien plant life to try and avoid overhead flying reptilian creatures coming to grab us one by one out of the air. “Reverie” makes it feel as though we have escaped, but it may just be a dream as the journey starts to look precarious again on “Bladed Terrain.” However, we make it out once again to a new, beautiful and bountiful world as colorful as the shimmer in Annihilation (minus the death) on “Diamond “Child.” There is even someone to play you some soft flute.
We finish on a high and energetic note like you have reached your final destination with a flurry of snare rolls and video game synths with the type of ravey trap you might hear from a Rustie (now an anti-vaxxer) record.
Ital Tek has distilled the best of his music all onto this album, calming and channeling the early glitch-electro and composing the beautiful melodies that have been an essential part of his music over the past several years. Outland is out now on Planet Mu here and is must-listen for your long days and nights indoors.
