A special ‘Submerge” 12” EP featuring a bunch of reworks of this pivotal track from ‘The Pool’, is scheduled prior the LP release as part of the album campaign. The EP contains remixes from Pye Corner Audio, Polypores, GNOD, The Hardy Tree and Field Lines Cartographer.
Apta’s new album, ‘The Pool’ and the accompanying remix 12” “Submerge EP” are both scheduled for release on Castles In Space this year.
‘The Pool’ feels like Apta’s most focused and compelling release to date. Based on the transformative plunge of a psychedelic experience, it maps the first tentative footsteps into the unknown and the euphoric, melodic bliss of our altered states of being.
Recorded using a combination of modular synthesis, Arp Odyssey, bass, guitar, Elektron grooveboxes and (for the first time in Apta’s recorded history) a hint of vocals.
There are wisps of melody from the outset, woven through skittering modular synths and saturated bass guitar. But it’s on the post-rock indebted ‘Shiver’ and follower ‘Awash’ that Apta’s distinctive mix of ambient music and flourishing melody take the fore. Later on, we get the more off-piste excursions, widening the boundaries of Apta’s already diverse sound and resulting in an album that falls somewhere in the middle ground between post-rock, pop ambient and kosmische.
Though there are definitely echoes of that pristine production aesthetic that has defined Apta’s sound to date, there are a lot more layers involved, with both gritty percussion and analogue distortion playing a much more significant role, echoing the waves of emotion involved in the tryptamine plunge, and resulting in a stylistically varied, but familiar experience.