Light Conductor are a duo, sometimes, often, trio of Montreal-based musicians who are members of the extended Godspeed You Black Emperor family. Their latest long-player, “Sequence Three”, is the final instalment in a trilogy that began in 2019. Citing Wolfgang Voigt, Spiritualized, Cluster and William Basinski as influences, and recording entirely with vintage analogue gear, the music they make is drone-driven. Their massed machines raising refracted, diffracted waves, washes of buzzing, fizzing frequencies. Rising in swells, swirls, sustain and synthetic symphonies. Generating moods that move from melancholic to euphoric.

“She Glitters The Dust” has a grainy, granular texture, as if it’s been dredged from memory. “Omenize” centres around soft, treated, slightly gated vocals, layered to create a choir / choral effect. Its subtle synth work coming in clouds, on which you might feel you’re floating. “Ghost City Radio” introduces a gently shuffling, tick-tocking beat and a sampled monologue that warns that “hard times are coming”. That urges, “get your house in order”, prepare for siege, as it expands on the idea of an impending supernatural crisis. Searing synthetic strings crisscrossing the scene, like a dystopian reprise of Carl Craig’s “Desire” or Planet Gong’s “Don’t Judge The Silence”. Careful keys pick out melodies within the modular manipulations of “High In The Orange Air”. Sequences that shine like shooting stars, comet tails, surrounded by blinking beacons of deep space distress signals. 

The closing, climatic, “Supercontinent” is a 15-minute epic, that opens with circuitry expressing itself in abstract, alien bird like, emissions. The sound of dials and knobs being spontaneously turned and twiddled. The bones of the track, though, is a chming, circular riff, that summons a sort of raga, and John Cale’s avant garde contributions to the Velvet Underground. A kinda pastoral kosmishce “Venus In Furs”. Cymbals shimmer, but their cathartic crashes are cut short, while wired resonance reaches for reed / harmonium wheezes, and feedback is bent into psychedelic shapes. Sending proceedings in a cosmic direction. Setting controls for the heart of the sun. Building to a mind-bending, deafening sonic wall that, while not a freakout or free-for-all, is definitely designed to derange the senses of anyone in earshot. Locking the listener inside. The sheer sheet of noise acting like a shield from the outside world as the spirit soars. 

Light Conductor’s “Sequence Three” can be ordered directly from Constellation Records.