Perfume Garden is the alias of Brisbane-based electronic producer Errol Hoffman, and as far as I’ve been able to discover, this download-only EP on Feral Media ‘Splintered Time’ offers up his debut release under the moniker. There’s a distinctly hypnagogic and occasionally post witch-house feel to the seven tracks collected here, which see Hoffman bathing old Casio keyboards, drum machines and digital synths with gauzy layers of delay and reverb to create an atmosphere that’s eerie and soothing at the same time. ‘Endless Sentence’ opens things with blurred-out bass synth drones providing a woozy ebbing backdrop as smeared out melodies pick out a tentative path against sparse vintage drum machine rhythms.
‘Varsus’ meanwhile sees towering synth arrangements taking the foreground as buzzing arpeggios wind themselves around slow echoing beats and stately vaporous pads in a moment that leans towards the calming yet dystopian feel of early period Boards Of Canada. Elsewhere, the title track suggests a slow sweep across the post-apocalyptic landscapes of some early eighties sci-fi movie as moody bass drones swell against coldly elegant synth arrangements, tape hiss and the slow pulse of reverbed-out snares and kicks, while ‘Benzaiten’ calls to mind funereal, almost church-like atmospheres as spiralling keyboards float against icy melodic counterpoints, in what’s easily one of the most frigid and pristinely glassy moments on offer here. All up, ‘Splintered Time’ offers up a gorgeous introduction to Perfume Garden that’s like to go down a treat with fans of the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never.
You can get ‘Splintered Time’ as a name your price download from http://feralmedia.bandcamp.com/album/splintered-time
