Cargo Records

Seedling Mother

Calika’s second album on Audiobulb brings together detailed electronic and acoustic elements to form a multi-layered soundtrack. At times confrontational and at others soothing, the album reflects the composer’s reaction to mankind, society and an increasingly connected and complex wider world. Calika is an artist focused on exploring the uneasy interface between electronic and acoustic music. Following his debut ‘Small Talk Kills Me’, has released music in collaboration with Mark Clifford from Seefeel, and a further solo album, ‘The Bright Spot’ on Benbecula. Calika’s aesthetic combines timbres born from the strings of dismantled pianos, harps, mouth organs and seemingly dismembered voices. The nuances of these sources are combined with acoustic and bass guitar and synthesiser. These tonal elements are set against an off-kilter backbeat of percussion made from found-sounds and processed drum kits. Toiling on his music day and night, Calika’s work is time consuming, obsessive, and compelling to listen to. ‘Seedling Mother’ develops a number of longer pieces containing transitions of pace and form. These enable the listener to become immersed in Calika’s powerful compositional processes.

There are no loops in this album; instead Calika applies both craft and guile to communicate his musical vision. Explorations in sound take the album on a journey through glitched up acoustics and dark freeform jazz rhythms to deep ambience, passing through post rock mathematics, techno, IDM and back again. The heavy and oppressive tone is nowhere clearer than on the title track, with its sampled argument between a teenager and his pregnant girlfriend. There’s an uneasy, voyeuristic shiver to it, but it’s compelling all the same. Yet while many records that convey a dark mood so concisely risk ending up being drab and depressing in themselves, ‘Seedling Mother’ avoids this and is an impressive and immersive experience.