mr. projectile - sinking review from in the mix Sinking is the first album released through Miami electronic music label Merck by Minneapolis-based artist and producer Mr Projectile. Prior to the release of this latest album, Mr Projectile’s previous releases on labels such as Toytronic and Music Aus Strom have generally explored melodic IDM breakbeat textures, with a focus on clean, crisp and almost glacial production. For ‘Sinking’ though, he’s instead moved his attention onto assembling slivers of vocal samples alongside reconstructed live instruments and sparkling breakbeats, with an aesthetic sensibility that seems to draw as much from classical composition as it does contemporary electronics. ‘You Need’ opens this album with an ethereal wash of ambience that slowly resolves itself into clicking and ripping timestretched IDM beats overlaid with delayed-out angelic female vocals that almost call to mind Kirsty Hawkshaw (of Opus 3 ambient house fame) or The Beloved. ‘Underneath the Evening’ fades into vision slowly with echoing ringing tones and washes of synth ambience, while ‘Resistance Is Fertile’ is constructed around a cycling melodic loop that’s almost gamelan-like, under which moody synth washes, clicking beats and what sounds like real bass guitar trace a moody atmospheric groove. ‘Acting Right’ treads similar territory to Plaid, with chromatic scales that almost sound like they’re taken from classical arrangements over manically ticking and stuttering glitch-beats, and ‘I Am Back’ carries echoes of drone-electronica / post-rock artist Dntel during its intro before Boards of Canada-esque plangent tones and whirring synths carry it down a downtempo beat avenue. ‘Slow Rewards’ is perhaps the most darkly-tinged and ominous track here, and is underpinned by tense hiphop inspired beats and chiming flanged tones, while ‘Sinking’ reintroduces heavily phased My Bloody Valentine-style female vocals over soothing bass tones and cycling skeletal beats, and evokes an atmosphere of classic 4AD shoegazer-era bands as much as it does IDM ambience. ‘The Inevitable Haunting’ echoes in slowly with what sounds like backwards heavily distorted piano tones laid alongside glacial synths, before closing track ‘Love Here’ takes things to an atmospheric close with more phased female vocals, plucked bass chords and clicking beats built around a central core of constantly shifting rhythmic elements that calls to mind the likes of Funkstorung. Sinking is easily one of the more immediately accessible releases that I’ve heard so far from the Merck camp, and its idyllic ambience and sense of almost somnambulistic grace is pretty much at odds with the some of the immediate associations brought up by Mr Projectile’s rather ballistics-oriented nom de plume. Enveloping and melodic with an exquisite level of attention to sonic detail, ‘Sinking’ is made with your headphones in mind – if melodic and ambient sonics lush enough to soothe your tired head while also stimulating your neurons sounds good, Mr Projectile’s latest offering is well worth seeking out. -Chris Downton mr. projectile - sinking review from absorb.org hailing from santa fe, new mexico, sinking is matthew arnold's (aka mr. projectile) third full-length. while the album graphics and minimal text content offer few hints as to what sinking sounds like, it takes only the first few seconds of the reverberant 'you need' for the disc's overall style to declare itself. it's an ambient overture of cinematic proportions, its opening of stately shimmer delectably fleshed out by amy turany's angelic vocal enhancements. it segues smoothly into the atmospheric 'underneath the evening,' all rolling waves of shimmering synths and sprinkling pianos with a soft underpinning of crackle seeping in at its edges. other tracks (like 'i am back' with its billowing clusters and the gentle 'acting right') exude a similar chill-out feel, but not all are so restrained. arnold works up some solid funk on 'slow rewards' and 'sinking,' and pairs bell-like percussion patterns with a tasty groove of laconic breakbeats and deep bass lines on the standout 'resistance is fertile.' typically, tracks are heavily layered with crackle, vocal waves, and electronic shimmer; in fact, 'love here' is so densely textured it suggests shoegazing. there are occasional instances where arnold's sensibilities sound perfectly in sync with the work of his colleagues. 'the inevitable haunting,' for example, is a reverie of thrumming patterns that wouldn't sound out of place on a stephan mathieu recording. in general, sinking's a solid and thoroughly accessible recording, but that shouldn't be interpreted to mean that it's excessively sweet or bland. if anything, it's rather retrograde in its embrace of an atmospheric ambient style that might seem somewhat quaint by today's standards but in fact makes it all the more inviting and boosts its charm. -review by ron schepper mr. projectile - sinking review from cyclic defrost Matthew Arnold’s third album rides in on a wave of approval from Funkstorung and it deserves the acclaim. Sinking floats between pillows of evolving ambience and stuttering digital percussion, before settling into bold, hip-hop hinted swathes of musical confidence. Laid back melody coexists happily with frantic drum programming on tracks like Resistance is Fertile and Acting Right. The production is clever without being tricky as it moves through the insistent crunch of Slow Rewards before reaching the title track – correctly billed as the stand out. Sinking joins a vortex of delay and vocal looping with hip-chugging syncopation and seductive. The Inevitable Haunting picks up the looping delays rather than the beats, and it feels like the natural thing to do. It wouldn’t be too many steps from here to a form of digital psychedelia That’s also true of the follower, Love Here , the third of the only-just-vocal tracks, this one with a dusting of Mum in Amy Turany’s voice. Across the album, bittersweet chord sequences and delays build into melody and hold the attention. The beats sometimes threaten to stumble but always remain upright. Sinking is a well-paced album – nothing outstays its welcome and it flows like a dream as it gently walks those twitchy glitchy digi-beats over to a soothing corner and makes them listenable again. The only gripe I have is with it’s slightly cold digital sound which could be the mastering, I don’t know. But don’t let that put you off because you’d be missing a treat.

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