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Eleh, "Radiant Intervals"
On my first time listening through Radiant Intervals, I was concerned that whatever magic Eleh was channeling previously, the source was fading. What was once rich in detail and emotional warmth had become cold and clinical. Yet, this was a hasty and trying the music again and again, I find the tones enveloping me like a cocoon. Considering this music cold was a mistake but it is clinical in a different sense to the usual critical context of the word. It is clinical in a restorative, healing way.
"Night of Pure Energy" is busier than what I usually expect from Eleh; the overlapping low frequency waves are joined by a rumbling beat and a higher tinnitus-like ringing noise. The whole piece sounds like the impossibly endless decay of bells struck before the recording took place. Just at the point when I become lost in the shimmering haze, what at first appears to be a pressing error on the LP breaks the mood suddenly. This scratchy sound, reminiscent of surface noise, allows the piece to disintegrate and for "Death is Eternal Bliss" to begin.
Like the previous piece, this too is centered around unusual harmonics and the beatings between the different frequencies but it takes a very different direction as it progresses. The beatings take on an inviting character, coming close to very, very minimal techno. The obvious touch point in Eleh’s catalog is their side of the split with Ellen Fullman (reviewed last week) and I wonder if Eleh is moving away from the more conventional classical minimalism of previous recordings.
The second side of Radiant Intervals is given up to two more pieces, neither of which repeat the ideas of the first side. "Bright & Central as the Sun Itself" sounds like the output of a mass spectrometer looks: thin, distinct bands of color (or in this case, sound) unique to the element being tested. Mass spectrometry was used to identify one of the main components of the sun, helium (the first element to be found in space before being later found on earth). Like helium, this music is lighter than air and it almost floats through the atmosphere. Suddenly, the individual frequencies coalesce into a body of sound that begins to spin under its own gravity like the furnace at the center of a solar system.
"Measuring the Immeasurable" seems to be born out the nuclear fusion of the previous piece; an increase in complexity as the gravity at the center of Eleh’s music begins to do its work. An arpeggio comes out of nowhere, as striking as landing on Mars and being greeted by someone you already know. This develops into the warmest, gentlest drone I have ever heard and how I thought this was cold during my initial listening session is beyond me!
As Radiant Intervals comes to a close for yet another time, it strikes me at how such "simple" music can be in eliciting a powerful emotional response. Throughout the album, feelings of calm permeate my mind. It is almost like a cleansing of thoughts; Eleh is a meditation music machine (although that sounds like a new age nonsense, there is certainly more mechanical elements in Eleh’s work compared to artists who evoke similar feelings like Pauline Oliveros or La Monte Young). Indeed, this use of focused drone music to initiate a change in mental state has been central to Eleh since the beginning; even before hearing the music, we only need to read the titles to realize that. Now Eleh has become the master in the approach to using a limited palette of frequencies to create such vivid, moving music.
 
