Secret Pyramid

For my 101st Fluid Radio review, this is not a Room 101 release. No, it’s a deep one, firmly anchored by lustrous synthesiser pads and hazy, amniotic rhythms. Secret Pyramid graced Fluid in 2012 with ‘The Silent March’, an altogether weightier 53 minute album that subtracted silence and turned it into an electro-acoustic sprite.

The textures on ‘Movements Of Night’, Amir Abbey’s first vinyl release as Secret Pyramid, approach the ice-floe movements of Glacial Movements’ Netherworld, mixed with Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works LPs and the pastoral elegance of Install’s David Tagg. They are free of bluster, big on solemnity and serenity. Often, Ambient music is a survival mechanism against loneliness, a sort of duvet to keep you snug and warm. These pieces do just that.

Across 38 minutes the LP rises like a tidal wave in continuity with what preceded it. It questions relationships between society and music, setting and commonplace gesture, simply by sticking to a simple theme of being nighttime music within a genre so enshrouded today by records, that, for the most part, are intended to be listened to in the daytime. The body clock of Ambient I find goes in cycles with the seasons. Currently we’re in night mode.

As a complete production, Students Of Decay’s landmark 102nd release – 100 releases for any label is something to be celebrated as it shows integrity – ‘Movements Of Night’ is a little beacon, gem thing that gives me hope in times of dystopian fortitude. I think you’ll enjoy it!

www.studentsofdecay.com