Light Procession, the latest album from English musician Daniel Mackenzie aka Ekca Liena, is an album full of long-form pieces that combine elements of drone, electronica, ambient, post-rock and tribal drumming for an excellent and evocative mix.
Opener ‘Channel’ is a wild and breathy song that starts things off calmly before slowly building up with stunningly tense and wild guitar feedback, before disappearing again into a sea of gentle synths. Untamed and untreated, the song is very reminiscent of An Imaginary Country-era Tim Hecker.
‘Nakamal’ is the soundtrack to a lonely winter’s evening indoors, containing a dark mix of dank and airy feedback and sparse, deadened xylophones. That is of course until the track slowly opens itself up and becomes awash with gentle synths and a tribal chant for a beautifully haunting atmosphere. Its not so much eye opening as it is mournful and foggy, like some distant memory or artifact from a forgotten civilization. Bleeding in to ‘Stratos Fire’ for the album’ centrepiece, we are all of a sudden overcome with muffled percussion and carnival whistles with a foreboding electronic ambience. It’s an intense and powerful moment, like returning somewhere you once knew and feeling completely alienated and alone with your own memories.
Elsewhere ‘Aileron’s Origin’ demonstrates Mackenzie’s range and is the most straight up peaceful and beautiful track on the album, reminiscent of Stars of the Lid. The album closes with ‘Ember Shimmer’ – here, bright and jumpy synths battle against the dark ambience to be heard, before the song is morphed and overcome with twangy, overlapping guitar parts. This song in particular takes me back to the Metroid Prime video game – Mackenzie’s evocative album would have been an excellent alternate soundtrack to the game’ melancholic science-fiction exploration of an extinct species’ home planet.
A deeply physical, emotional and evocative album, Ekca Liena has created one of the best ambient albums of the year. With the average song length at a slow and languorous ten minutes, it’s not exactly the easiest album to listen to – but it certainly is thrilling and constantly evolving; the rewards are plentiful if you search for them.
Wyatt Lawton-Masi
