On the back of a couple of cracking EPs, Northern California’s Cahl Sel now releases his debut LP on Reflective Records. Titled Traces, the album’s an immersive ambient affair, apparently honed and fine tuned during live hardware performances. 

Following in his father, Jonah Sharp’s illustrious musical footsteps, Cahl Sel has picked up the baton, and put his own twist on the sound of the classic electronica created by the first wave of UK techno producers, who in turn had been inspired by Detroit’s pioneers. 

Similarities to his dad’s work – something that was celebrated on Music From Memory’s Virtual Dreams and more recently Fundamental Frequencies’ terrific Telepathic Fish compilation – are impossible to ignore… the melodic bleeps, and shiny, steely, synthetic strings, but Cahl Sel has taken these 1990s tropes and filtered, diffused them through 21st Century deep listening. The results more organic, and suggestive of sentient machines.

Some of the wonky, warped sequences certainly bear the Sharp signature. On Call To Mind these unfold, evolve, opening wormholes, expanding, intertwining, into something emotive and epic. Regeneration whispering and trickling, has slowly, shapeshifting sine waves like Tibetan bowls singing. Halflife’s jolly, jaunty keys ride funky TB-303 bass. Like some lost Mike Paradinas / Richard D. James skit, with a feel good smile on its face. 

Old school drum & bass-derived rhythms are also deconstructed,  transformed into dubbed-out debris. Rattling clattering meteor showers, that are racing, yet serene. Clear’s complex, countering patterns manage to make the programmed syncopation sound like spontaneous improvisation. The busy interlocking clicks and whirs of wheels and gears spinning. Bucolic, still not banging.  The Game is a sea of broken beats on which the listener can float freely. Alone plays with puckered, processed percussion and blows in a light breeze of mechanised marimba. Simulating sun reflected off calm, silvered, still water, Leaf is a final sheer sonic sheen.

Cahl Sel’s Traces can be ordered directly from from San Francisco’s Reflective Records.