3 out of 5

Label: Clone Basement Series

Produced by: Aleksi Perälä

Woozy, mesmerizing ambient-esque Colundi beats from Aleksi. …But I’m coming up a bit short on things to say.

Ever since Aleksi “discovered” the Colundi scales, his music has gone deeper and deeper in a particular direction: it’s often beautiful stuff, and incredibly smoothed over; glowing, resonant tones, with a fade-in fade-out mentality that begs for patience when appreciating, letting the compositions grow on you. Given the wealth of material Perälä has put out in this vein – an insane amount; 10 full-length releases so far in 2023, 7 months in – it’s impressive that the work continues to offer the same quality, and consideration. I don’t think I’ve listened to a track that doesn’t have feeling behind it.

However, that feeling has strayed less and less from center: something you bliss out to; music for meditation. I don’t want to undervalue that, and clearly, given the appreciation you’ll see in reviews and on bandcamp, there are fans of this who are able to dig in more than I can. But releases like Simulation get to a logical endpoint for me, where the samey-runtime and samey-pace and samey-range of nearly all the songs isn’t enough for me. Of the eight tracks here, only one really stands out – NLL561606938 – which, coincidentally or not, is also the only song that bucks the 4 – 5-minute length and breaks 7-minutes, allowing its base beat to gain a little bit of edge.

Elsewhere, we have material that calls to mind the softer side of Astrobotnia, with its contemplative, spacey sounds, or Aphex’s bubbly beat on Ambient Volume I; but smoosh or shove the range of those artists onto the Colundi scale, which is an endlessly pleasant, inoffensive stream of notes, and while obviously having given Aleksi a wealth of options for compositions, has generally not – to my ears – given me a really definitive release past some of the originals. Though perhaps the cyclical exploration of self these songs encourage (maybe I want to read in to the album title?) isn’t intended for stand out albums and singles, rather exactly what we’ve been getting: this consistent stream of dense chill-out tunes.

In short, if you’ve liked any of Aleksi’s Colundi material, this is in-line, and not any kind of redirection; if you’ve been ambivalent, though, you’ll likely remain the same.