Icons

New York based percussionist and composer Eli Keszler has been a vital force behind some of the 21st century’s most forward-facing music

Frequent collaborator to Laurel Halo and Oneohtrix Point Never – Keszler’s work includes contributions to Daniel Lopatin's nightmarishly psychedelic score for the Safdie Brother’s acclaimed Uncut Gems.

Now, Keszler returns with a solo album of beguiling Fourth World music – a blend of electronics and global music influences, drawing on ambient, jazz and minimalism, alongside harmonies and traditional instruments from across Africa and Asia.

Keszler’s latest venture offers up a latticework of melodic percussion, drum set and electro-acoustic instrumentation, built upon fragments of American abstraction, ancient scales, industrial percussion and Jazz Age film noir to achieve its feeling of imperial decay. Keszler’s instrumental performances are framed by panoramic recordings of New York City and the Odyssey Cave, along with other on-location audio from his global travels, defining an expansive music that takes on hyperreal forms difficult to describe outside an articulation of the loss and wonderment that defines our age.

Icons begins with an ambient synth swell, where the only hint of rhythm comes in the distant thunder of a tribal drum invoking the past-future amalgamate of 1980s Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Throughout Icons, Keszler masterfully balances rich production with fire starting spontaneity, standing in trepidatious awe of our modern times.

Tracklisting

1. All the Mornings in the World
2. God Over Money
3. The Accident
4.  Daily Life
5. Rot Summer Smoothes
6. Dawn
7. Static Doesn’t Exist
8.  Late Archaic
9. Civil Sunset
10. Evenfall
11. We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn