Paul Jebanasam is set to release his debut full-length, entitled Rites, via his own label Subtext next week. The Sri Lankan-born, Bristol-based musician was last heard delivering an excellent, stormy remix of Emptyset’s Demiurge in collaboration with Nick ‘Gravenhurst’ Talbot, and now Rites extends a similar mood across the course of five extended movements, drawing from ambient drone, metal, noise, sacred musics and modern composition. We’re pleased to be able to offer you a stream of the entire album in advance of its official release date of 22nd April – listen via the embed below.
Jebanasam’s label Subtext – part of Bristol’s Multiverse collective that also includes such institutions as Pinch’s Tectonic label – has been responsible for a string of great releases in the last couple of years, primarily from Emptyset and former Vex’d man Roly Porter. The latter two share a similar darkened, distorted atmosphere to Jebanasam’s music, though Rites more audibly nods towards genres like metal, as well as to the city’s roots in bass-driven music. Jebanasam formerly produced dark, atmospheric and sparse dubstep-rooted tracks under the name Moving Ninja for the Tectonic label.
"The pieces explore the central themes of grace and savagery," reads the text accompanying the album’s release, "contrasting historical musical languages with the emergence of visceral sonics and immersive tonality, overlaying the past on to the present and considering the possibilities of sound as an eternal, universal medium embedded within the order of civilisation.
"Through the five ceremonial passages, Rites brings together a unified vision of existence projected across human memory, merging the primal impulse of metal, noise and richly textured drone with the tension and emotional narrative of classical composition. The material summons these elements together, evoking a machine of incalculable scale forging a world distinct of time where man’s transit and reckonings merge with a vast and unforeseeable purpose. The visible and invisible streaming together into pools of chaos and sanctity, a landscape stalked by the unknown, the human spirit uttering a desolate whisper to the spirit of its ancestors."
