Potions

Potions

Pushing The Cuboid

100% Silk

Eight new nubby acid permutations by Chicago’s premiere liquid electric projectionist, Potions. Sourced from a set-list of 2015 live staples, Pushing The Cuboid expands Tom Owens’ melting microchip fusion to include a more warped spectrum of bubbling concoctions. Recorded to a Tascam 4-track and digitally mixed with limited overdubs, the album oil-spills an array of fantastical wavelengths: moonbase monorail cruise (“Heel Lift,” “Space Mountain”), rubbery sarcasmic jazz (“Goof Forward,” starring Rob Frye of Bitchin’ Bajas on mult-tracked horns), outer rings cosmos shuffle (“Cool Ride”), cyber warehouse lurch (“Detroit Heart Strings”), etc. As always with Potions, there are no solid states, only alchemic flux – dissolving textures, rhythmic wobble, heavy phasing, cuboids pushed through unstable grids. In addition to Frye (whose flute and bass clarinet color the entire B Side), PTC also shows influence from Owens’ visual collaborator, Jillian Musielak, who projects mutating textural environments during performances. Speaking of: a string of spring dates throughout the heartland and west coast have been mapped to occasion the new release – catch his liquidity live if geographies allow.

Potions

Phased

100% Silk

Chicago’s Potions (aka Tom Owens) oozes a suitably liquid sub-species of electronic rhythm miasma, which he’s been bottling on boutique cassette reels since 2011, exploring various vibes and viscosities. Phased collects seven of his latest and most luxuriantly languid lava lamp concoctions for what, to our ears, may be his supreme setlist to date. Recorded primarily using “MIDI technology of decades past” (not for nothing was his debut LP called MIDI Jazz Bass), the album slips and slides through jittery cyborg jazz, disjointed lounge-fusion, siphoned acid, and dubby, dissolved house, a bubbling beaker of fluid synthetic textures. The off-kilter percussion programming gives each piece a pleasingly unstable voltage, skewing the equilibrium in whooshes of phaser and stereo rainstick. Fellow ambient sculptress Laura Jane Friedman guests with some gorgeously reflective multi-tracked vox on “Glass Lake,” but otherwise this is an instrumental affair. Mastered by Alter Echo.