While much of it now seems quaint, at best, and kitschy at worst, there’s a certain appeal to the simplistic images of the future conjured up by the visual aesthetics of early science fiction. Clean lines, lots of gentle curves, and an overall sterility were frequent hallmarks of the style, especially in terms of architecture and design. The music of Aemae often harkens back to a similarly forward-looking time, the nascent days of electronic music, when many of the artists were as much scientists as musicians. But, The Helical Word is evocative of the fictional future as well, and Aemae’s second release cultivates a sound largely reminiscent of the retro-futurist world of stark minimalism that was brutally countered by Ridley Scott’s crowded vision in Blade Runner. Like The Helical Word, the more old-fashioned future wasn’t necessarily a more placid one, but even at its most hectic, there existed optimism in the most basic elements of its design.
Brandon Nickell is Aemae, responsible for this album, from the creation of the software with which it was made to the release of the disc on his own Isounderscore imprint. Like the album’s cover art, Nickell’s constructions evoke visions of vivid colors on a jet black background, vibrant movements in the center of a void. The music is largely a clean one, and while Nickell’s tones aren’t immaculate, their rough edges tend to shimmer and swirl rather than break off abruptly. At times, the music seems to mechanically fold in upon itself, like a machine gone perpetually awry, at others, The Helical Word is far more expansive, an alien sunset over an obsidian earth. The components of Nickell’s creations aren’t wholly foreign; ring modulation and other familiar effects can be extracted, but their presentation is one that encourages the listener toward a more cosmic approach to listening. Nickell’s best work is his most ethereal, with slowly shifting fields of sound and gentle neon flames, though there’s a meticulous glee in some of the more gritty tracks, in which translucent tongues takes components of IDM and rearranging their particles into a whole new form, and metallic shivers spark and fizzle in spasms of controlled chaos.
Long before the adjective “trippy” was hijacked by the popular vernacular, it might have applied to The Helical Word. There’s not much similarity between Aemae and a San Fran jam band, but if acid really makes one hear colors, the veritable Aurora Borealis of this album certainly fits the bill.
