10.23.19 by Ryan Masteller

This one looks like math. There are axes (an x axis and a y axis) and an origin where they intersect. Quadrants. Geometry. Physics. Space talk. I’m bad at math.

XI-N sounds like a math thing, like a supercomputer or NASA probe. It is not – it is an entity called Dovlet Shyhmyradov, but Dovlet Shyhmyradov is not doing itself any favors by calling its tape “Pulsar” and then acting like a pulsar, what with the beams of electromagnetic radiation emanating out of its magnetic poles. It feels like I have to get down and dirty with the math just to parse these signals that are coming out of my speakers, and I’ve stated my position on my own math skills. I also wonder if XI-N realized it was way further advanced technologically as a being before releasing “Pulsar” on cassette tape? This thing should be strictly ESP waves. It’s obvious that XI-N is from a place where brain-to-brain communication is much more commonplace.

Well, you might say, this is all well and good, and actually rather interesting from a scientific and even maybe a lay standpoint, but if “Pulsar” ain’t good, I’m turning it off. Friend! Don’t touch that stop button. There are recordings that make you want to scan the night sky through a high-powered, government-funded mountaintop telescope, and “Pulsar” is in the upper echelon of those. The glistening synthesizer work and soft rhythmic touches form the perfect soundtrack to fuel curiosity beyond this lonely blue marble. XI-N makes atmospheric soundscapes that actually make you feel like you’re not a human anymore, like you’re an enormous nebula or rushing supernova or some crazy undiscovered anomaly that physics hasn’t accounted for yet. And you’re those things and observing everything that’s going on around you, for light years in every direction. Can you imagine that? It’s super hard to. Our brains are small.

XI-N is trying to help us expand them. Good for you, XI-N!

These gorgeous tapes are available in a batch of 50 from Bulgaria’s Amek Collective. Did I mention “Pulsar” is the first tape in Amek’s “EXPERIENCE” series, “which presents and preserves live recordings captured during Amek Collective events”? I didn’t? Well, now you know. Get in on the ground floor.