(2026, no hand records)
Electronic musician Maarten Wesselius has been making sample-based electronic solo music since 1999 under the name Pels, while over the years also being part of the ensembles Oorcontact and Broodbaksessies, and currently of the band Theory of Nothing.
His latest offering is a significant departure from his previous album. While Schakelbreuk Jozef (released in 2021 on adventurous music label esc.rec.) served up short, giddy songs built around ironic voice samples and catchy post-modern sketches sampling all kinds of instruments from koto to cowbell and from tambourine to trumpet, his latest release ‘Ether’ seems to be its polar opposite: it is constructed solely from a particular species of electromagnetic waves that conjure up sensations of an intangible geo-psychic realm far removed from the world our human senses allow us to perceive.
Artist Louis Braddock Clarke had invited Wesselius to make use of a selection from the hours of sound samples recorded in their project Untangling Noises of Matter, in which they employed a custom-built device to capture electromagnetic waves from selected physical spaces and map them onto the audible sound spectrum.
It should be noted that ‘Ether’ is not part of Clarke’s project, which resulted in a video and art installation; while ‘Untangling Noises of Matter’ was concerned with the excavation and displacement of metal ores and sonification of the resulting disruptions to the electromagnetic field that would otherwise remain imperceptible to humans, the music of ‘Ether’ turns its focus to the sonic properties of those recordings to compose music that capitalises on their distinctive textures.
At first glance, one might be tempted to try and figure out which sounds on ‘Ether’ are deliberately arranged by Wesselius, and which parts were conjured from the vast amount of electromagnetic fields that surround us in day to day life. It’s perhaps a tough listen at first, especially to those who got into Pels’ discography through the tongue-in-cheek IDM found on Schakelbreuk Jozef. However, the glitchy pulses on tracks like ‘The Fold’ are clearly part of the same sound world. Ether presents a wide palette of electronic textures, from the heavy, droning and somewhat noisy oscillators on ‘A Removal of The Seer’ to the gorgeously bright and abstract ‘I Have Drowned in the Noise’. Ether feels like a dialogue between the chaos in our universe and the fundamental human need to find form, meaning, emotion and structure in the randomness.
Get the CD here if you’re in Indonesia, or from nohandrecords otherwise. You can also download as digital files from either of those links, or listen to it on your favourite digital streaming platform.