Nexciya — Endless Path of Memory (Pensaments Sònics)
Whether deliberate or not, the name Nexciya immediately recalls the influential Detroit duo James Stinson and Gerald Donald AKA Drexciya. Any sonic similarities are oblique at best. Even at their most ambient, Drexciya put beats and an aquatic mythology in the foreground. Adam Dove’s work largely eschews the confines of tempo for a sound lusher, more evocative and inward looking. You can hear traces of Drexciya’s oceanic keyboard sounds and imagine their rhythms kicking along over parts of Endless Path of Memory, but Nexciya concentrates on blurring the boundaries between inner and outer worlds. Free from conventional, tempo driven structure, his tracks shimmer and mutate like mercury rolling across unstable topographies.
“My Eyes Looked Dull and Sunken” develops with haunted gravitas. The music seems always on the verge of losing balance, distant echoes of children’s voices and what sounds like a trudge through thick undergrowth playing against pure, elongated keyboard tones that sigh with despair. “Bury it Deep Inside Yourself” uses bass tones that dissipate and regather, a rumbling backdrop that ebbs and flows like an incoming storm heard from beneath thick blanket, which offers neither protection nor comfort. The mood is not entirely dark, however. The glacial arpeggios of “Things Fall Apart” evoke growth rather entropy, as do the samples of birdsong and running water that Dove uses as counterpoint to his motile drones. When does he use recognizable beats on “Tales” and “Replica” they fracture and disintegrate on the former and dissolve into granular quicksand on the latter. It’s as if the tracks have organically freed themselves from structure so to as pursue their freedom to roam, or escape. As a metaphor for our attempts to regiment and shape memory, it is central to Nexciya’s project.
Endless Path of Memory is an elegant and eloquent reflection on the obstinate power of memory and its vital role in shaping our relationship to ourselves and the outside world. Nexciya finds both despair and joy in its persistence and by foregoing conventional structures allows his music to mirror memory’s mercurial nature.
