- Gorgeous ambient music from Pulse Emitter, reflecting the vastness of both outer space and human emotion.
- Pulse Emitter's Bandcamp page is an aesthetic mess. Dozens of albums are stacked on top of each other, with the grayscale artwork of the project's darkest, droniest albums sitting next to the eye-popping neon designs of New Age-inspired releases. It's not the artist's fault: most people's discographies would look hideous crammed into a narrow strip of screen, especially if they're as eclectic as Portland synth artist Daryl Groetsch's has been over more than two decades recording under the name.
The Daryl Groetsch Bandcamp page, on the other hand, is a beauty to behold. Though Groetsch has been massively prolific as Pulse Emitter for over two decades, this page contains his first new solo work under his birth name since 2002's hard-to-find Slem. Two albums stand like twin stars: Home Again, its cover an infinity of clouds bathed in gorgeous pink and purple light, and Beige World, its cover… well, you guessed it. When an artist ditches their alias to use their real name, it usually implies the music they're making is more personal, or somehow truer to themselves. But I suspect Groetsch just wanted to clear some space so these gentle, sighing ambient synth albums could have more room to breathe.
The symmetry is immaculate. Released on the same day, they resemble each other in profile: four tracks, all between eight and 12 minutes. Home Again is unsurprisingly the more peaceful and more reassuring of the two albums, while Beige World is sort of a softer version of insular, lunar Pulse Emitter releases like Pleistocene and Voids. But they don't feel like a good twin and evil twin so much as two halves of a double album, and while both are strong listening experiences in their own right, they can just as easily be listened to one after another.
If you intend to listen to both in a row, start with Home Again. Opener "Deep Blue Sky" is about as moving as music this placid gets. The whalesong-esque synth that moans at the center of the mix imparts a real sense of yearning. The angelic pads surrounding it might've been programmed to sound vaguely like voices, but that squarewave synth really does feel like a voice, and it shows up again at the end of "Fuchsia Vortex" a few tracks later, playing deep, dark chords that show off Groetsch's classically-trained ear for harmonics.
The shadows lengthen on Beige World. Of the two, it's less interested in the deep melancholy that drives Home Again and instead reflects impassivity, vastness, coldness and starkness. Groetsch's curious chord choices keep things fresh and interesting, and the sumptuous mix, making full use of the stereo spectrum, is pure ear candy. It'll be a little bit nostalgic to anyone who's ever pondered the mysteries of the universe to the searching synths of an outer space documentary soundtrack.
Groetsch cites the long-running ambient radio program Hearts Of Space, which he listened to as a kid, as an influence on the sound and style of these two works. Maybe that's where these albums' heft comes from: the desire to shed the baggage and cynicism of adulthood and see the stars through fresh eyes again. That would explain why these two records feel so much like a fresh start and why he felt it worthy of its own space, away from the rest of his catalog. But let's hope Groetsch's Bandcamp page sees a little more clutter in the years to come.
TracklistHome Again
01. Deep Blue Sky
02. Home Again
03. Fuchsia Vortex
04. Mist Descends
Beige World
01. Beige World
02. Leaving Orbit
03. Floating
04. Thinking Space