September 20th marks the release of Los Angeles-based musician *Wylie Cable’s* 7th full-length album, *Lemniscate* on Dome of Doom Records, the artist founded label started close to a decade ago. The music burns with an unabridged intensity, completely different from his last body of work, *Buried At Sea*. The unhinged and experimental nature of the label’s ethos shines brightly across the new work, defined through a duality of futuristic progressions in electronic music and past influences forged from a multitude of genres. Many traditional mathematical concepts and references are scattered throughout the song titles and factored into the modeling efforts of the compositions themselves, bridging together the surreal and the measurable; the infinitely unattainable with the tangible. *Lemniscate*will be pressed in a limited edition run of 100 cassette tapes and will be available on streaming services worldwide.
Features and collaborations comprise the bulk of the recordings on *Lemniscate*, bridging together many minds from the Dome of Doom family: AHEE, Holly, CLYDE, Gangus, and SnakeFoot. Wylie Cable adds further insight on why he selected the musicians found on the new LP, *“When I chose people to collaborate with I always want it to be someone who's artistic decisions I already naturally enjoy, that way I don't have to spend time trying to steer the project one direction or another, and you get to let people do what they are most talented at without restraint. All the projects with collaborators on the album went through many stages of change, in most cases starting as an in-person session that we then sent back and forth over and over, kind of like a process of refining and filtering a precious substance.”* Every artist is integral to the shape of the whole, blending their personalities and styles with a cohesion that sticks to the surface of the LP’s flow.
Conceptually, Wylie Cable found inspiration for the design of *Lemniscate* in his obsession with the concept of infinity and its mathematical
entanglement with the spiritual concepts of the afterlife and the infinite nature of reincarnation and past selves.
“In algebraic geometry, a lemniscate is any of several figure-eight or ∞-shaped curves. The word comes from the Latin "lēmniscātus" meaning
"decorated with ribbons", from the Greek λημνίσκος meaning "ribbons", or which alternatively may refer to the wool from which the ribbons were made”-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemniscate* <
Lemniscate - Wikipedia>
Unlike all the previous works in his catalog, Wylie Cable visualized the concept for *Leminscate* in one lightning-bolt like experience during a
late-night work session. Quickly documenting his vision on a set of note cards as each part of the record revealed itself, Wylie Cable describes the experience in more detail, *“I was sitting in my house late at night near the end of last year, probably around 3 am just writing and sketching in my notebooks and brainstorming ideas, then suddenly I was hit with this huge flash of inspiration. The title for the album, the names of the tracks, the collaborators I wanted to be involved, all sort of suddenly fell in my lap in a moment. I frantically wrote it all down on some note cards I had laying around and the process for making the album started. This is interesting to me because usually, my process involves making lots of music and then finding what from a collection feels like an album. This was almost the opposite process, where I got the full concept for a record all at once and had to build the parts one by one to fill in the conceptual piece in my mind. Many song names on the album make references to "lemniscate" and the concept of infinity. I think this album is also a reflection on our inevitable death and the cyclical nature of life.” *
Wylie Cable added a number of unique instrumentation across *Lemniscate* that gives its tonality a bold and fierce magnetism, including this year’s newly released analog synthesizer module from Moog, Sirin, as well as Oberheim’s Viscount Joint Venture, Arturia’s Keystep, the renowned mid-70s vintage synth Octave Kitten, and his late father's Fender Jazz Bass. A fusion of electronic influences spanning the last three decades emerges when listening to the album front to back, speaking the language of Dome of Doom’s creative force. Revered hip-hop artist Jonwayne mixed a large portion of the record, with labelmate Gangus taking on mastering duties.
*Lemniscate* begins with a tremendous jolt of energy, the first song “Aleph (feat. AHEE)” combines ‘90s era Drum & Bass dance floor energy with the forward-leaning beat-centric ethos of LA’s underground music scene. A close friend and labelmate, AHEE is the first collaborator on the album and created all the bass sounds in the track with the Prophet X. Most of the piece was co-written in the studio by both artists, with Wylie lacing the entire piece with a montage of synth melodies and AHEE programming drum rhythms. The song charges through quick rhythm changes and arrives at a haunting quarter-time breakdown, composed later on in the process by Wylie, that explodes with a darkened state of surrealism.
Portugal’s Holly contributes on the exotic, smoldering, and dynamic pace of “Decorated With Ribbons.” Holly’s raw and intense mixture of sidewinding rhythms and sample chops crystallizes through every measure, balanced by the more meditative and slow-moving sections composed by Wylie that are draped with sitar and vocal contortions. Wylie also recorded live flute
performances by MJ Noble at his home studio, layering and composing with the raw recordings the same way someone would rip samples from their favorite jazz record to make new melodies with. These added live recordings help create one of the most peaceful and beautiful sections across the entire album. Wylie Cable and Gangus’ “Oculus Non Vidit” is one of the album’s most powerful pieces, incorporating Middle Eastern scales, syncopated drum patterns influenced by the likes of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, and quickly shifting sections that feel like a heightened state of controlled chaos. It’s one of the most palatable and universal songs of LP, suited for large speaker systems deep in nature.
"Mobius Strip," a collaboration with United Kingdom’s CLYDE, is a hypnotic and album defining tune that takes the listener through the evolution of their respective sounds and finds a middle ground that feels like new sonic material for both artists. The track revolves around a cyclical yet unmeasurable vocal chant, with deep sub-bass rhythms changing and shifting to create a wide array of feelings and styles in one song. “Wool” features the ever-expanding talents of Snakefoot, calculated and precise in measure cycles, sample variation, and overall structure. The album’s conclusion is meditatively somber, rich in a drowned array of guitar and analog driven electronics devoid of drums. The guitar samples were recorded by venerable Los Angeles-based musician Kenny Segal and played by Ryan Crosby, a frequent collaborator on many of Segal's productions and songs. Wylie Cable chopped, flipped, reversed, stretched, and further mutilated the recordings into a dream-like sequence meant to evoke the late writer Nobokov sitting in his hotel in Montreux, examining his butterfly collection and knowing that this is his life's final chapter.
*Lemniscate* is an album that finds Wylie Cable turning internal voyages and collaborative efforts into a vortex of sound. A footprint in the search for what else life has to offer after we transition and the memories that we leave behind when charting intersecting paths.
Purchase/stream *Lemniscate* here:
Lemniscate by Wylie Cable
