Hexa by Cleared - Touch [TO126] FLAC download included with physical items

Hexa

Cleared

A 7 track ambient album (38m 31s) — released September 27th 2024 on Touch

#electronic #ambient

Cleared, the duo of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera has re-emerged with Hexa, their

sixth release and third for the Touch label. Steven Hess recorded sessions in the

group's practice space, handing them over to Vallera, who in turn added his home

recordings, mixing and manipulating them. The final product provides only the barest of

hints to any instrumental points of origin, such is the extent of their intermixture.

Hexa brings the listener interiority and depth, beginning with the slow build of the title

track, where chiming details prompt a cycling drone. The "Magnetic Bloom" pulsations

give way to granulated smears, while the well-named "Time in Return" plays with

repetition and layering. The density in the tracks relents with "53S," a recording from a

train station contributed by the field recordist Chris Watson. The spatial sensations

brought by the clanking and creaking offer a respite of sorts before the accretion of

processed magnetics resume on the aptly entitled "Sunsickness." Clouds of static

overwhelm the initial melodies of "Ash." Pulses, bursts, and points of electronics breach

the layered blankets and sheets of sound, as with the concluding track, "Oval Waters."

If you need to identify a genre locale, put Hexa on the side of the street where current

electronic music lives. However you categorize the album, it is an absorbing listen front-

to-back. Each track emerges with layers peeling and/or accreting and new details

revealing themselves. [Bruce Adams, 2024]

Cleared's third album for Touch plays like a faded photograph, with only faint, dubbed-out traces left of any original instrumentation. Killer gear - like a Chain Reaction-coded take on electro-acoustic improv - Boomkat

...brooding soundscapes with dark washes of sound that’s like thick smoke coursing through a tunnel. And while the title of the following track may suggest something similar, Ash is a pulsating rush at altitude. A piece that builds majestically with warm drones that reach a crescendo in the clouds. Again, it’s that hope on the back of despair that sees Cleared like never before. - Simon Kirk Sun 13

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