Planet Mu Records
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Claude Speeed returns to Planet Mu, two years after the 'Sun Czar Temple' EP, with his second album 'Infinity Ultra'. He describes the record he's been creating since he started making computer music as one "conceiving an interior territory: an abstract space to process the oppression, confusion and insanity of the contemporary age; and to formulate an honest emotional and artistic response - a psychic jumping off point into an uncertain future."Visit product page →
'Infinity Ultra' takes inspiration from sleep paralysis, monumental artworks, children's anime, abandoned places, ghostly rave pasts and terrifying silicon valley futures, and the limitless anger of the digital present.
These influences have been channelled into an impressionistic burst of varied creativity: Shimmering VSTs; monolithic noise; euphoric blocks of colourful sound; trance stabs and the citrus rush of hardcore; towering drones, and skynet math rock - all rendered against cold, sinister space and nostalgic synth melodies.
The album reveals the artist's Scottish roots, viewed at a hazy distance from his Berlin home - a series of memories of Glasgow's experimental psychedelic underground, its DIY rock scene and defiant club hedonism.
These genre relationships are blurred and at times they contrast with audible brutality; the result is a hybrid, sculptured way of rendering music - minimal specifics, maximum emotions.
Tracklisting:
2LP:
Side A:
1. BCCCC
2. Serra
3. Windows 95
4. Ambien Rave
Side B:
1. Alternate Histories (ft. Kuedo)
2. Moonchord Supermagic
3. 800 Super NYC
4. XY Autostream
Side C:
1. Fifth Fortress
2. VZJD
3. Entering The Zone
4. Center Tech
Side D:
1. Spirits
2. Contact
3. Dreamdream
CD:
01. BCCCC
02. Serra
03. Windows 95
04. Ambien Rave
05. Alternate Histories (ft. Kuedo)
06. Moonchord Supermagic
07. 800 Super NYC
08. XY Autostream
09. Fifth Fortress
10. VZJD
11. Entering The Zone
12. Center Tech
13. Spirits
14. Contact
15. Dreamdream -
Sold outVisit product page →Scotland's Claude Speeed first came to our attention via his epic 2012 remix of Kuedo's 'Work Live & Sleep In Collapsing Space'. With a history in various bands such as RUSSIA and American Men, his work draws from Scottish post rock, 90s and 00s electronica, American minimalism, noise & drone. After a significant time travelling abroad he relocated to Berlin and released his debut album for LuckyMe, entitled 'My Skeleton'. Now he is releasing his follow-up EP 'Sun Czar Temple' on Planet Mu - an epic set of songs that distort emotional songwriting with textured synthetic ambience and computer noise. Dreams on hard disk.
The EP opens with the epic 'Traumzeuge', a piece for digitally obliterated piano and plugins taking its inspiration from territories of culture shock and insomnia. Starting with monolithic slabs of SOLAR PARALLAX distortion, the layers of intensity build until eventually dropping out, revealing gentle, warm guitar harmonics and tender vocals. 'Dr. Liz Wilson' begins with twinkling, bleeping arrays of electronics: implied interstellar communication. Warm sinewaves and rising tone clusters build up into a rushing wind tunnel of s||||ESCAPE TIME FRACTAL||ound.
Hidden drums, ghost choirs, and geometric cryptophasia arpeggios disappear into chaos. An Adrián Villar Rojas memory of terraforming and futuristic DMT ruins.'VIN', serves as an interlude, built on field recordings from a short trip into an empty forest, made with looped tape noises and crushed oneiric chords.'Fret' draws from a story about an abandoned palace, far away from anything. Initially composed entirely visually in Logic, sound muted, without any timing grid. Dense pitch shifted chords and multiple random effects building into strangely unearthly pop with Ryuichi Sakamoto 80s drums and obscured vocalvocalvocal loops.
The final track, and the EP's most epic, 'RU Sorry?' (CITY CASTLE VICTORIES) opens with simple synth 5th interval figures evolving slowly into an enveloping, rippling, cosmic fuzz. building up to near noise, then falling away into blocks of buzzing chords. Distortion appears gently until a smashed out post rock crescendo bursts through.Afterlife / Angels.
Side A:
1. Traumzeuge
2. Dr. Liz Wilson
3. Vin
Side B:
1. Fret
2. R U Sorry?
