Konntinent - Down With Candy

To the best of my knowledge, Antony Harrison (Konntinent) is something of a player in the ambient/drone/neo-kosmische scene, but unlike so many others, he hasn't released a slew of cassettes and/or  cdrs. Instead, Harrison seems to prefer to put some thought into his recordings, which has certainly paid off on past releases like last year's excellent Arev Benn, where the synthscapes have the feel of real compositions, rather than the mere elaborations on simple ideas that fill the releases by so many in the indie neo-new age crowd. Konntinent's latest release, Down With Candy, is culled from two different live sessions, and shows that Harrison's compositional sense remains intact even when he's making music on-the-fly. There's more of an emphasis here than on past releases on rhythm and space. But the rhythms are offset by an imaginative use of delay that gives them a lurching quality, particularly on "Red Lion", whose subtle interplay between repetition and shifting tones reminds me of Vladislav Delay circa The Four Quarters. Indeed there's much here that recalls the shifting aural spaces of early-00s dubtronica, or the improvised rhythms of The Moritz von Oswald Trio, but wedded to the more texturally minimalistic and melodic sensibility of Oneohtrix Point Never. Konntinent is certainly worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as other contemporary kosmische explorers like OPN, Emeralds, Stellar Om Source, Dylan Ettinger, and Rene Hell, and hopefully his distinctive sound will bring him the recognition he deserves.

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