Always off on his own track, electronic trancer Os is deliberately branching it out'n'away from the psychotic phuture romanticism which he creates with Darkroom. Carbon Boy - a newer mask and method he's trying on - is altogether more meditative. A time-bider. Patient to brew where Darkroom stalks. Preferring a soft, insistent, intimate pressure as opposed to Darkroom's dense galactic force; and letting the world enter.
Throughout Carbon Boy's debut EP radio dials are gently twisted, like a violinist whispering a melody out in bowscrape. The genteel voices of BBC announcers are gently swept aside by bursts of Lebanese folk singing, by little moments of drama; or just by the busy, oblivious muttering of someone living a life completely separate from yours, but one brought close for a moment. Os' work still sounds like almost nobody else's (you could file it with the sweeter side of Aphex Twin's early ambient works, but it wouldn't be content to stay there for long). Admittedly some of the burnished shivers of mainstream trance make their way into "Tickled"'s gentle hover (as does a melody sounding like synth-cheese classic "Popcorn" turning up on its parents' doorstep twenty-two years on; humbled, sage-er and strung out on some pychedelic compound stretching its attention from wall to wall). But Carbon Boy music raises more than simple dance sensations.
"Mash" is definitely one for very old memories. Specifically, the psychedelic perceptions of infanthood - when you're taking in everything around but lack the pegs to hang concepts on before it all slides out of your skull, and therefore you swim in the middle of a gorgeous, liquidly disassociated kaleidoscope of images. Here, a mix of calmly conversing partyline voices busy themselves meaninglessly in the background. The electronics swim around the dusty, blurry beats like voices that have half-remembered how to sing; the basslines have a deep "dad's voice?" comfort to them. Little furry tunes, like calculator or subway jingles, wander naively through, make their presence felt, and then drop out.
By comparison, the cold, clear thrill of "Rye" (with its tight little breakbeat lock) touches on the same East London night vision as Boymerang - the feeling of coasting airborne over an illuminated city, isolated and sealed snug within your headphones, with something incredible coming looking for you out of the night, heralded by that sinuous muezzin cry that snakes through the cool lapping air. And although it doesn't explicitly tap into the powerful momentum of New York, "Rox" somehow reminds me of time spent chasing art and music there, even when it fades out in a buzz of cricket chirps. A rapturous opera soprano swerves through it, when the poised net of radio whine isn't dominating the sound. A little bit of mechanoid funk stands quietly by in the bassline, sweet high chimes are swallowed up by gallery space, and some of that subliminal Manhattan freedom, upflung and airy, has seeped in.
The "Baby Croon" EP is made up of remixes (including the name - "Carbon Boy" goes into "Baby Croon" without a letter to spare) which turn up the ambient quota without wimping out. If anything, "Pickled" makes "Tickled" more coherent: blades out to sharpen the sounds, beats and aggressive birdsong upfront, and a stormfront moving in on the Equatorial chillout. "Wry" takes "Rye" and turns it into something like a Kronos Quartet rehearsal atop an East End night market. The stately passion of the disciplined, leaning melody comes out above the various knocks, bin-rolls, mosque bursts and cheery street beats. "Rocks" softens "Rox"'s airiness even further. A wobble-boardful of displaced bass air to hold it together and this time other clues to hear: now a gauzy chant of radiophonics, now the ghost of a New Wave jangle; or an R'n'B "bayy-beh" hiccuped from a speaker and out of an open, distant window. Summer in the city, and everyone's zonked out and daydreaming.
A further step's taken on "Mashed", which strips "Mash" of even the supportive skeleton of the original, removing beats and cushions until only impressions are left behind. Static surf, fuzzed-out guitar stings, radio squeals, those nursery jingles... and, every so often, distant warm pillow-hums. Even bringing the conversing French voices up into clarity reveals nothing; questions and chat busily coming close and ebbing, detached but unaware of it. Carbon Boy remains the quiet observer, watching things flow together but making neither comment or ecstatic statement. But deep inside the head... dancing.
Dann Chinn