Seeing Silence

Konx-om-Pax's first two albums for Planet Mu moved from amorphous ambient abstractions (Regional Surrealism) to bright yet half-dissolved rave nostalgia (Caramel). With Ways of Seeing, producer/graphic designer Tom Scholefield places a greater focus on beats and melodies, yet his music remains just as dreamy as it was before. Scholefield recorded Ways of Seeing after relocating from his hometown of Glasgow to Berlin, and while the album is certainly his most techno-influenced release yet, it sounds nothing like the sort of dark, paranoid techno one might associate with the city. Instead, it's joyous and even beach-ready, exuding warmth through hazy, lo-fi textures.

A companion piece to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, this second volume in the Pentimento series presents eight new tracks by the music visionary, continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing. Pentimento is defined as the “reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over” and this is evident in the innovative production style that ‘paints with sound’ using overlapping nuances to create an undefinable and intoxicating new palette.
In classic Hassell fashion, the title can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, but perhaps the most pertinent at the moment is the human instinct to sing and play through a rain of difficulties…