James Stinson has made more than a few appearances as of late - never under his actual name, usually under one of his many guises. One of the enigmatic members of Drexciya, Stinson is behind many of my classic electro favourites, and today I thought I'd bring up one that I haven't actually touched on before. What I especially admire about Stinson's work is the theming that often comes with them - you have the high-tech melancholy of The Other People Place's Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café, the self-professed love letter to Kraftwerk that is the Elektroids' Elektroworld (though the exact membership of the Elektroids was never fully estabished, a 2008 Warpmart listing had "Produced by Drexciya's late James Stinson" as a bit of promo text), to the very obvious aquatic influence that underpins the entirety of Drexciya's output.
Continuing that trend we have an album I haven't actually mentioned before from another alias of Stinson's: Transllusion with The Opening Of The Cerebral Gate. Cerebreal is a perfect descriptior of it, a little more esoteric than the other examples I've listed, loaded with themes of mentality and psychedelic touches - to quote the bandcamp page directly for a moment: "hypercharged arpeggios and driving pulse patterns, morse-like tones and chord stabs, huge, über-booming tympanic kicks and grainy snares"
My favourites, surprising no one, are the more airy tracks. I've chosen Dimensional Glide for this time, those of you familliar with Stinson's other works will immediately clock the shared sound DNA between this and his other projects. Glide is the longest track on the whole thing, but when I get really into it those 7 minutes pass by like nothing. It's a wonderful piece and defintely is my absolute favourite of the lot, but if you dig this I can highly recommend not only the full thing but pretty much everything that Stinson ever did.
I've got a little somethin' different lined up for the end of this week so expect a break from this format, but I must admit I have enjoyed being able to just go all in on one specific track like I have done here. Until then, as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.
-CVF
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