Nervasystem - Nervasystem4 Album FLAC

I was very surprised when I first played the album, because it was nothing like the “old” Nervasystem – it was slower, more funky, much more organic as opposed to the very cybernetic, raw sound of e.g. “Time Travel”. It is very rich in detail, never gets stale, always develops and progresses into new directions adding layers upon layers of crazy sounds & effects. In some ways, it’s a bit like bunch of loops thrown together on the top of 4/4 beats, but none of those elements is ever simple, trivial or cliché. Despite the obvious sequenced nature of the music, it never feels like it’s mechanically quantized, measured & clinically sculpted to fit the 4/4 regime, which – for me – is a bane of a lot of electronic trance music. Instead, this album is like a beautiful, evolving organism – a tree perhaps? – with sounds & layers smoothly and naturally interweaving, complementing one another to form unique sound patterns. It rarely goes where you’d expect it to go, doesn’t care one bit about the “rules” of psy-trance and doesn’t shy from juxtaposing seemingly unfitting elements together. Basically all tracks are like that – slowly building up to a crescendo, that you wouldn’t normally call a ‘climax’ because it’s so non-standard for goa/psy-trance. There are acid lines, but they’re unlike you ever heard – very dirty, primal and analogue. There are 4/4 drums, but they’re also more akin to some dirty industrial / glitch styles, rarely resorting to typical kick/hat/snare combos. There are melodies, but you’d hurt your tongue trying to hum them – they’re (positively!) lazy, slow-paced and growling. If I were forced to name some musical (or “sonical” – that’s much more fitting) references, I’d probably point to old Koxbox / Psychopod, Process &, OOOD and from more recent releases: Nebula Meltdown, Ocelot, Hedonix. It is this kind on non-goa psychedelic trance, where under right circumstances you can get totally lost in all the nuances, the unearthly atmosphere. It isn’t very dark (as in – nocturnal) music, but it’s definitely moody & deep and requires healthy dose of attention and patience to get the most of it, because – maybe with the exception of “Knowle Edge” written with Colin OOOD – there’s no apparent & clear melodic hooks you could cling onto to carry you forward. But if you commit yourself, you’ll find plenty of those drifting just beneath the surface. This is properly “psychedelic” music.

All in all, I found the album incredibly refreshing as it stands out amongst the crowd of other neo-goa, dark-psy and progressive trance releases as something really novel and unique, difficult to qualify and close in a neatly labelled box. It is high-quality, deep, thought-provocative and meditative music.

To address the controversy - yes, the album comes printed on a factory-grade CDr disc and in cheaply made digipack, but I don’t care as long as my money support an artist in pursuing his own, very unique vision.

And this is definitely the case here.