With “1979”, µ-Ziq continues his pilgrimage into ambient, and does so with an elegiac and collected pace. The new album draws inspiration from a trip to Spain, his parents' homeland, and sounds radically different from the productions of the Nineties, where synthesizers were treated like crazy toys. Here, on the contrary, the sound finds a dimension of meditative stillness: horizons of light emerge (“Yemas”), arpeggios that breathe, voices that dissolve between the manipulations of reverb (“Billowy”). Alternated by never invasive rhythmic episodes and with the melody guiding like a compass (“Floatation”), the fifteen stages unfold in a reflective range, at times surreal (“Pulsar”) and disturbing, restoring the image of an Idm alchemist in constant metamorphosis.
Mike Paradinas' personality is one of the most eclectic in the underworld braindance has generated. We are talking about a tireless creator, with about twenty full-length and as many EPs, full of flashes drill & bass which recall Squarepusher and ambient-techno futurisms related to a certain Richard D. James. From pioneering works, unbalanced between breakbeats off course and acidisms that today show the sign of the time, Paradinas has undertaken a path of stylistic maturation, migrating in recent years towards more introspective paths: think of “Magic Pony Ride” (2022), up to this new chapter, released by Balmat and in continuity with “1977”, published in 2023 by the same label.
As already happened with the Dovs, the label Spanish music confirms itself as a laboratory of visions and melodic progressions: a space where artists can reveal what remained in the shadow elsewhere. “1979” does not redefine ambient aesthetics: it remains a coherent but secondary work, a contemplative fragment rather than a real step forward. Perhaps it is a record for completionists, but also a necessary station to understand the breadth and curiosity of one of the most restless wanderers of contemporary electronics.
02/11/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
