Bagaski - Azalea

Released: December 15

In his fourth album on See Blue Audio, Berlin based artist Bagaski presents us with eleven tracks of sonic oddities that diverge only slightly from the material he has become known for. Compared to his previous release Praeludim, there is a certain atmosphere of thick, layered, and slightly distorted darkness while still keeping with all of the intriguing synthwork and eclectic sound. This is despite what kind of connotations the artwork may inspire on its own. The opening few tracks lean into this thick atmospheric, but later on things take a bit of turn into the lighter but still sufficiently trippy and abstract.

Opening up with "Hawkish Torso," we get something that feels chaotic but has a oddly-metered loop running throughout that keeps us grounded in the composition. This as pointed noisy synths scream quietly in the background and leading us to the fading end as the loop disappears. "Nosebleed VII" drops some of the dark atmosphere and replaces in with warm overlapping pads that surround the listener in a distorted pillow of sound until fading away and taking us to "Low Rules the High." Here we get a moodier bit of distorted melodics and a subdued rhythm in the background. 

Later on in the album we come to the plucky little track "Luioy" which seems to eschew the thickly layered aesthetic of previous tracks in favor of a single track of arpeggiated ear candy that grows progressively more complex as the track goes on until ending only as a reverberated shadow of itself. This fun little jaunt dovetails nicely into the title track "Azaelea" in which lush pads return with a fascinating synth accompaniment that sounds almost vocal and slightly mournful in its answer to the primary pad. Finally, we come to the final track in which percussion is the focus with another oddly-metered loop running alongside it. It makes for a wonderful call back to the beginning of the album without being so on the nose.