Deep Nalström - Naissance Aux Mondes Invisibles (2022)

New artist welcomed on the Slow Life family, the multitalented french artist stablished in Bristol, Deep Nalström. Ethereal vibes, trippy percussions, deep downtempo grooves... just magic.

Bristol-based musician / graphic designer Guillaume de Ubéda dons his Deep Nalström guise for a third full-length offering. The album, once again is mixed by Emmanuel Corre, of electro-evangelists Nummer, but this time the music’s been licensed to Sergio Moreira’s imprint, Slow Life.

The set’s title, Naissance Aux Mondes Invisibles, translates as “being born / reborn into invisible worlds”, and that’s what Guillaume’s productions have always been about. Clearly inspired by Jon Hassell’s Fourth World concepts, our French friend has made a career of “fusing the ethnological with the technological”, tapping into both the past and the future, to create somewhere new, unspoiled. An illusionary, idealized, Eden. Alien aural landscapes full of wired wildlife warbling. Painting pictures of this peaceful terrain inside your head.

Consisting of improvised pieces, often recorded in one take, in the main, to my ears at least, this collection is more consciously ambient than his previous outings. There’s a real stillness to the movements. The tracks washing over you warmly, bathing you, like a relaxation tape. The percussion could have come from a spiritual jazz session. Cymbals, gongs, assorted shakers, and water-filled vessels, conjuring the vibe of a temple, in a rainforest, at dawn, while synths mimic pan-pipes, and summon, sweet, cooling savannah winds.

The only outlier is the final track, Beyond The Barrier, where the rhythm is a little bit more robotic, but still it’s soaked in swooning, romantic, Robinson Crusoe-esque, strings. A waking dream of serene, deserted desert islands.