Event Horizon - EP Leo James

• 1Event Horizon10:05
• 2The Surface07:24
• 3The Centre of Time20:02
• Total Runtime37:31

Info for Event Horizon - EP

An event horizon is a physics term, used to describe the boundary line within a black hole from which nothing can escape. If something’s getting sucked into a black hole, even light itself, and it crosses the event horizon, there’s no turning back. In a scientific quirk, anyone looking at something crossing an event horizon from the outside will never see it vanish. Instead the object will distend infinitely, stretching out but never quite disappearing.

Leo James, the Australian producer and Body Language label-head, takes this concept to heart on his first EP for Berceuse Heroique. Everything on the EP has a patient elasticity, operating within the logic of spacetime rather than earth minutes. New sonic elements don’t just appear, they unspool. The title track spreads deliberately across ten minutes, its simple house beat loaded with clipped melodies and flashes of a celestial choir. A robust bassline starts locked in a tight coil, but blossoms into a gravelly lead over the track’s final minutes.

The Surface plays with time in a more striking way, like Detroit techno gone downtempo. Each element is given space to breathe, from the quick synths to the squeal of a sax, before the track descends into a poignant coda, all fluttering piano and plangent ambience. James saves the best for last – The Centre of Time is a twenty-minute epic sprawling across the B-side of the record, a beatless odyssey where every element is stretched almost beyond recognition. As a galactic trip it’s utterly consuming, its mournful melody teased out until the closing sequence where it unravels, becoming something familiar, eternal and luminous.

Leo James, electronics, programming
Cayn Borthwick, saxophone

Leo James
Since his solo debut on his own imprint Body Language back in 2015, the output of Australian producer Leo James has been synonym with choice blends of off-axis electronics, industrial rhythms and well-finished sound designs. After a first excursion on Vienna’s finest Neubau last year, the Melbourne-based producer steps up on Berceuse Heroique with ‘Event Horizon EP‘.

This album contains no booklet.