Kösmonaut – Emanations (Ethereal Mother, 2011)

Kösmonaut – Emanations
Ethereal Mother 2011

Kösmonaut is Patrick R. Pärk hailing from Texas. On Emanations’ first song, The One, starts off with some cosmic synth minimalist repetition in a rather hypnotic style. A slight drone enters over the repeated arpeggios along with a gentle, 80s sounding drum machine in the mix, giving the piece a kind of psychedelic danc-y sensation. Things get a bit dissonant on the droning synth, but it is somewhat backgrounded. Some wild, panning, phasing enters from the synth towards the end of the track. On the second song, titled Monad, things get going with low, warbly synth drone only to have the dancy drum machine beats enter again. As the piece progresses, the synth drones get a bit distorted and dissonant. There’s a strange harmony in the dissonance coupled with the dance rhythms, ingredients for creating that hypnotizing effect. And by the end of the track it settles back down to the warbly drone that started things off. The third song, called The Indefinite Dyad, also begins with a drone but this time it is higher in pitch and of a warmer quality. More drones layer within, creating oscillations between them. The rhythms enter again, in unison with some synth beats as well. There is also a filtered synth in the mix that sounds like it is wind! Towards the end of the song, some of the synth sounds become quite minimalist and melodically repetitive. The last song, Primordial Gnosis, gets on the dronier side in the first few minutes with the formulaic oscillations and queasy dissonance more in the forefront this time than the drum machine. However I think it ends the album on a more harmonious note.