Nickolas Mohanna - Reflectors

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4...according to our Ant on Fri 09 Sep, 2011.

I've reviewed a couple of discs by this guy before. Namely 'Optics' on Slow Flo and also 'Transmission Hue' on Low Point, both of which I really got quite into. This new offering is equally as submersive in many ways with its wonderful guitar and synthesizer sounds which shimmer and hover, occupying a total blissed and very lovely world. The final disc in Preservation's ongoing "Circa" series, it's a fine way to conclude this mind melting collection of releases. I cannot even remember where this series began, they're all just brain melting. A testament to the potency and cerebral power of the releases involved I would say. Nickolas's offerings to the cause here are equal part techno sine wave mutations and something more personal which is difficult to articulate. The sounds fizz, bleep, mutate and evolve in all sorts of unexpected ways where old synthesizer techniques cross paths with more advanced modes. Essentially electronic music with a trained eye looking to the past but also one looking straight ahead into an unknown future. By the time I reached 'Glows Lush In The Night' I was on the very edge of nodding off to sleep but a few sounds reeled me back to consciousness. 'Particles' ends the trip with some fantastic rhythmic electronics which peak into synth bliss outs and such like. A real head scorcher if you let it in. Stop reading and just listen as this will do the job perfectly. Class action.

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The Preservation label presents Reflectors, the second album from New York's Nickolas Mohanna. Also working as a visual artist, Nickolas draws unique forms from the wealth of sounds found in New York's complex sprawl and imbues them with feeling and subtlety. The sounds on Reflectors buzz with rich detail and rhythmic interplay for a work alive with beauty and mystery in its atmospheric reach. Previously living in San Francisco for a number of years, Nickolas studied with noted electronic composer Bob Ostertag, whose use of sampling and tape manipulation informs his own work considerably. Thinking of Reflectors' pieces as 'tone poems', Nickolas juxtaposes field recordings with guitar and synthesiser treatments to refract the natural world through sci-fi vision. Finding the ground between the concrete and cosmic in summoning a curious, compelling aura throughout, Reflectors is a fascinating step in exploratory music's ongoing dialogue between now and then. Refectors is the fifth and penultimate work in the limited edition CD series from Preservation called Circa for 2011. Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available, featuring a design by Mark Gowing. Each design for 2011 will be realised using a specially created abstract alphabet of shapes, determined by artist, title and catalogue number for something both fixed and random. Circa will return in 2012 with a new design model.

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