Off Land - Excursion (2022)

Is it possible that Tim Dwyer’s Off Land project, like fine wine, just keeps getting better with age? You bet. In fact, if there were any justice in the world, Off Land’s name would be up there in lights alongside colleagues Brennan, Global Communication, Eno, Froese, Orb, et al. The man’s surely paid his dues at this point, for his catalog is now one of formidable prowess; one thing he doesn’t lack is ingenuity, for there’s hardly a duff note amongst it. This latest missive for Carpe Sonum is a beautifully minted thing, its electronics cascading off a million reflective surfaces in starbursts of colors every bit as prismatic as the multi-layered synthesizer lines sporting them. Look no farther than the spiraling miasmatic sequencers of “Weathered Patterns”, which sets up its own ecosystem of immersive atmosphere, like riding abreast the silkiest little fluffy clouds imaginable. “Granular Shore” does it one better, a percolating analog bubblebath within which whispery, mellotron-like filters open to reveal all sorts of wondrous beings and their strangely shifting sounds dancing the light fantastic. This is music that intersects 70s-era Teutonic ancestry with the magic realism of contemporary electronic sound design, yielding a new-fangled space music every bit as vital and vested as Dwyer’s long-lost pioneers. On the shores Off Land, beauty’s in the ear of the beholder.