On their full-length debut together, the UK techno producer and the Italian synth guru conjure a mood of pulsing electronic grandeur.
Apparently Song for Alpha wasn’t a fluke. Released in 2018, Daniel Avery’s second album sharply diverged from his rave-ready debut, Drone Logic, showcasing his more pensive, ambient side. At the time, it felt like a reaction, a document of Avery’s desire to linger in what quiet moments he could find in a life of endless touring and main-room DJ gigs. But Illusion of Time suggests that perhaps a more fundamental shift has taken place.
On this album, Avery is working alongside Alessandro Cortini, an Italian synth guru who’s also a member of Nine Inch Nails. It’s not the first time the two have joined forces; in 2017, working remotely, they produced a limited-edition 7" called Sun Draw Water. That record’s two songs both appear on Illusion of Time; the rest of the album was completed in 2018, when the two artists finally linked up in person while Avery was supporting Nine Inch Nails on tour.
Avery may be the bigger name here, but the record has Cortini’s fingerprints all over it, especially when the album delves into the synth-gaze territory of his excellent Volume Massimo LP from last year. Although Illusion of Time lacks that album’s bright colors and wall-of-sound dimensions, there is a similar sense of synth-driven grandeur at work, albeit less polished and occasionally darker in tone. The menacing “Inside the Ruins” feels like something out of Ben Frost’s playbook, its glowering tones churning and crashing amid a thick soup of tape hiss and distorted ambience. Another epic is LP opener “Sun,” which unfurls towering waves of fuzz-laden drone while tapping into an almost devotional vibe; it sounds like something you’d hear at a yoga retreat scored by Stephen O’Malley.
Despite Avery’s DJ pedigree, Illusion of Time has no real relationship with the club. There are no beats on the album, and though it’s not exactly ambient, the music does tend to drift and float along. Like Song for Alpha, it’s introspective, yet not nearly as insular. There isn’t a concrete narrative to speak of, but Avery and Cortini have clearly cast their gaze skyward; it’s a beautiful record that takes wonder as its defining characteristic.
The crunchy “Enter Exit” feels like a luxuriously undulating sound bath, while “Water” offers an updated, albeit unvarnished take on shoegaze, with jagged melodies reminiscent of majestic post-rock outfits like Explosions in the Sky. More powerful still is “At First Sight,” a wide-angle track powered by the kind of guitar squall that would make the Jesus and Mary Chain proud; the song conjures the awe-struck sensation of gazing down from the edge of a high cliff.
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That feeling of rapture also holds firm during the album’s quieter moments. “Space Channel” and “Interrupted by the Cloud of Light” are essentially interludes, but their dreamy atmospheres could have been crafted by the Cocteau Twins. The title track is one of the LP’s most low-key selections—and one of its obvious highlights—featuring a playful melody that sits somewhere between kosmische pioneers Neu! and Selected Ambient Works Volume II-era Aphex Twin. Illusion of Time may be doused in varying layers of crackle and distortion, but there’s no obscuring the tranquil elegance of “CC Pad” or the cinematic bloom of album closer “Stills."
Illusion of Time is a confidently relaxed listen: Created in a pressure-free situation by two artists with no road map and nothing in particular to prove, it is expansive in scope, charmingly rough around the edges, and brimming with possibility. Its hazy synth explorations may fit more naturally into Cortini’s catalog, but Avery’s role in Illusion of Time shouldn’t be overlooked; in the wake of Song for Alpha, he’s taken another step away from the confines of the dancefloor, and he’s done it without wobbling.
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