UK-based electronic producer Monty Adkins primarily creates slow-shifting ambient soundscapes that incorporate organic instrumental textures, and this latest album ‘Fragile.Flicker.Fragment’ follows on from his 2009 collection ‘Five Panels’, which received a nomination in last year’s Qwartz Awards. In this case, the nine expansive beatless tracks collected here see Adkins drawing inspiration from a series of paintings by visual collaborator Pip Dickens, and indeed there’s certainly a highly visual / cinematic quality to the music here, as well as an exquisite level of attention to detail regarding overall sound design. Opening track ‘Memory Box’ introduces the dreamily blurred aesthetic that colours much of this album as glistening, icicle-like melodic tones glimmer against a swirling backdrop of pitch-shifted drones, the sense of tentative wonder recalling SubtractiveLAD’s ambient explorations even as moodier bass tones and fluttering glitchy textures begin to creep into the undergrowth.
By comparison, ‘Etched In Air’ sees a droning backdrop of vocal harmonics stretching off into the horizon as crackling broken electronic detritus and more ominous bass undertones slowly begin to gather pace against the more wide-eyed atmospheres, in what’s easily one of the darker tracks to be found here, before ‘Suspended Edges’ takes things down into deep, subaquatic atmospheres, the occasional pulse of what sounds like air bubbles fluttering against a vast wall of refracting synth drones. ‘Ode’ meanwhile sees the emergence of relatively recognisable instrumental performances as rich, warm accordion tones glimmer and build against a widescreen swell of melodic drones and buzzing electronics, in a moment that pretty much begs for its own cinematic accompaniment. Gorgeously enveloping and meticulously crafted stuff that’s well worth investigating.
Chris Downton
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