Rival Consoles : Landscape From Memory
Us music reviewers, we’re out here projecting what we want to hear as much as we’re describing what we actually hear. Landscape from Memory, the new album from London electronic producer Rival Consoles, rises to the challenge of pulling together a solid set of work from disparate inspirations and scraps of previously unfinished ideas. But at this point in Ryan Lee West’s career, is solid good enough for us and for him?
The three years since his last album, Now Is, found Rival Consoles in something of a creative funk. His most productive moments in this period apparently came through different forms of relocation: capturing music through air and microphone instead of connective cables, writing it mere meters away from his studio setup, or spinning it during a Lisbon nightclub residency. As a title, Landscape from Memory suggests this music was made by going back to both basics and the Rival Consoles archives.
Much of this album shuffles across Balearic, vaporwave, and hyperpop, trading soft synth lines and watch-mechanism rhythms. Rival Consoles latches onto a particular element for some songs’ respective propulsion systems—“Jupiter” uses primitive metallic percussion, “Drum Song” is a bass synth workout. Ambience (in both Eno and Aphex flavors) gets ever more prominent as Landscape from Memory progresses, with “Nocturne” and the rhythmic alarm-klaxon atmosphere of “Soft Gradient Beckons” commanding the most interest.
But a lot of this album doesn’t jump up and grab me as Rival Consoles has done in the past. Too many of these songs hint at other current great electronica acts but don’t rise above them, too many are (at least) a sound or a feeling away from being massive. First single “Catherine” is a modern two-step instrumental in search of a vocal, a polite, bottomless groove that wants to be a pop song but doesn’t quite get there. “Known Shape” and “In a Trance,” meanwhile, try to hearken back to intelligent techno and never really take off.
The true highlights on Landscape from Memory include the backmasked vaporwave of “In Reverse” and the Latin dance-referencing “Gaivotas.” Still, even the album’s speediest moments are tied down with pensive, reserved samples, and the atmospheric work drags in its back half. A lot of people are going to find a lot to like on Rival Consoles’ ninth LP, it just might take longer than anyone planned.
Label: Erased Tapes
Year: 2025
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