Audiopile Review: Dutch producer and composer Michel Banabila is one of those previously obscure European ambient/fourth world artists who have recently found favour with crate diggers and reissue fiends everywhere. Think Gigi Masin and Ariel Kalma. The wonderful thing about all three of these artists is that they’re all still making great music. And here we have, ‘Unspeakable Visions’, a brand-new album from Banabila. Immediately, it’s clear the rediscovered-ambient producer he’s closest to is Italian fourth world pioneer Roberto Musci (whose ‘Tower of Silence’ compilation on Music from Memory is beyond essential). Like Musci’s music (and Richard Horowitz’s, come to think of it), this is very much ‘sampling keyboard’ composition. You can easily picture Banabila sitting at an Ensoniq workstation, punching in samples of non-western percussion and garbled voices. What’s remarkable is that the results never sound clunky. There’s a seamlessness to ‘Unspeakable Visions’ that makes it utterly immersive and thoroughly cutting-edge. By combining mesmeric humidity with uncanny discontinuity, Banabila creates something genuinely strange and dreamlike. But it’s also immediately appealing and deeply chill. Honestly, ‘Unspeakable Visions’ is almost superfluously brilliant. You had us at ‘sounds like Roberto Musci’. This is, frankly, an excessive abundance of unearthly wonders.

Banabila returns with a second LP release on Knekelhuis. The renowned Dutch producer is up there among the stars when it comes to ambient music and the so-called ‘fourth world’ legacy. On this eleven-track album, we witness soul-wrenching, kraut-tinted, and early-yet-modernist electronics.

Coming from his heart, these imaginative recordings center around otherworldly voices – fictional characters chanting in a made-up language, imbued with a captivating spirit, transcending linguistic barriers. Through remarkable complexity and technique, ‘Unspeakable Visions’ is full of sonic textures, together evoking a layered, emotional arc.

While the track ‘Rattles’ still references the artist’s first album on Knekelhuis, ‘Echo Transformations’, the style of most other tracks departs towards an intriguing new mix of both pop-infused songs and gloomy abstraction, balancing between a sense of anticipation and desolation.