Merrin Karras - Apex (2016)

After producing and playing under Chymera for more than 15 years, Brendan Gregoriy's distinctive take on house and techno has seen him release music on respected labels including Ovum, NRK, Delsin and Cocoon. Inspired by the sounds of artists like Klaus Schulze, Biosphere and Abul Mogard, and finding renewed focus in creating without external pressures or deadlines, Gregoriy's ambient experimentation emerged, fully-formed, as Merrin Karras. Gregoriy: "I'd just finished a particularly grueling album and I just didn't enjoy the process. Around that time, I started listening to people like Steve Moore and Oneohtrix Point Never and it blew my mind. I tried making a few sketches and realized that I enjoyed it a lot more and this became a gateway into discovering ambient properly." The results are remarkable. Combining his gilded production with an armory of hardware, Apex serves as both a modern ode to the synthesizer and a reverential nod to the early pioneers. Written and recorded in two Berlin winters, it's a record driven by a widescreen contrast between celestial beauty and engulfing black hole intent. Flawlessly produced, Vangelis panorama and vintage sci-fi exist in a space where drums and rhythmic elements have been willfully stripped out to "let the synths breathe".

Tracklist:

01. Catharsis
02. Elevate
03. Apex
04. Severance
05. The Veldt
06. Liberant
07. Void
08. Isolation