Album of the Week: Convextion – 2845

What drew us to it: The album artwork.
What does it sound like: Like that advanced civilisation in H.G Wells’ Time Machine.
Where will it fit in: Amongst the more restrained Ambient and Techno moments like Truss Me and 7th Plain.

Convextion’s 2845 is an album that completely sucks you into its alien, space-exploratory world. The artwork’s initial engagement with its audience and the 16-minute opening track, New Horizon steadily draws you into textures laden with engaging melodies and buoyant harmonic expressions and before long you find yourself completely immersed in Convextion’s music. There’s a Sci–Fi / space-aged theme to the music that gets communicated through dreamy synthetic atmospheres, playing perhaps on Gerd Hanson’s personal fascination with those themes that ‘s cropped in his music before, most recently the Hubble Telescope-referencing Ancient Light under his ERP moniker.

Like that ERP release from this year what Hanson does impeccably well as Convextion is the way he composes rather than designs. His focus is in creating the appealing textures on 2845 are not through creating a sonic palette from which a song will gestate, but rather bringing different melodic elements together, whether the splash of a high-hat or the legato pulse of a string, to create a new sonic world. The result is a very futuristic space with a very organic feel.  Like some utopian future civilisation that survives at one with nature at a very technologically advanced age, Convextion finds a serene balance between the synthetic layers and the natural way they unfold. 2845 isn’t shy of a beat either, but doesn’t insist you get up for the occasion either, making it the perfect introduction to the start of your night, whichever musical galaxy you might find yourself travelling to.