Istanbul-based electronic composer Ipek Gorgun last made an appearance with her collaborative album alongside Ceramic TL ‘Perfect Lung’ earlier this year, and now a few months on, this latest collection ‘Ecce Homo’ on Touch offers up her second solo album. Recorded over a period spanning two years, Gorgun describes the eleven tracks here as “exploring the lighter and darker shades of the human psyche, behaviour and existence, and humanity’s ability to create beauty and destruction.”
As with ‘Perfect Lung’, there’s an emphasis on maximalism and total sensory immersion here, with many of the tracks here shifting between serene ambience and intense noisy textures. It’s certainly an apt sonic metaphor for the full spectrum of human nature being explored by Gorgun. ‘Neroli’ opens this album with a sparkling ambient wash of melodic notes, the tones seemingly to hang suspended in mid-air as they wash back and forth between the speakers, phasing and glistening like chimes, before more brooding bass chords bass chords arrive during the second half, taking things out into a void of droning harmonics.
‘Afterburner’ meanwhile lives up to its title as layers of what sounds like reversed vocals in different languages give way to rushing walls of noise, the phased frequencies seemingly to intertwine into a thundering vortex before suddenly dropping down into ominous dark ambience as eerie noise sweeps whisper against chattering contorted vocal samples.
Elsewhere, ‘Bohemian Grove’ sees samples of a US televangelist getting cut up into surreal non sequiturs (“they are coming”) against icy washes of bass ambience, pitched up cartoon vocals and glitchy bursts of digitally treated noise, before ‘Reverence’ takes a completely different turn as delicate minimalist piano arrangements get reshaped into howling harmonics and ping-ponging ricochets.
Personally though, I found that closing track ‘To Cross Great Rivers’ was easily one of this album’s biggest highlights as glowing walls of ambience trail like an aurora against glittering keys and vaporous textures, the entire blend of lush, immersive textures offering up perhaps this album’s most fully realised work. A gorgeously sensual album, ‘Ecce Homo’ continually reveals more with each subsequent listen.
