Swims Vinilo y CD

Review: With its crackly, gravelled textures, subtle melodic details and off-beat rhythms it's no surprise comparisons have been drawn between 'Finomehanika', Vladislav Delay's 'Mulitia' and Autechre circa 'Confield'. Fittingly, those turn-of-the-millennia masterpieces also arrived around the same time Merlak's 'Albumski' landed, his most recent long form outing until unveiling this, his latest effort. Talk about a long time coming, while the stylistic similarities might suggest a lack of progression since 2001, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, what's here could be perhaps best described as avant-garde electronic warbles and shuffles, of the type you might hear after stepping into a capsule floating through blackest space. But although familiar, the album arguably represents the artist's deepest exploration of what can be done with a combination of synthesis, piano and field noises.