Audiopile Review: Do you like your techno dubby, glitchy, and slooowed down so much that it isn’t even really techno at all? Think the deconstructed dub of Rhythm & Sound. Consider the mesmerizing bass pressure of Pole. Ruminate about the dehumanized jazz fragments of Jan Jelinek. Recall the intellectually rigorous lounge music of Fluxion. Meditate on the cinematic drones of Vancouver’s own Loscil. Ponder the fragmented soundscapes of Vladislav Delay. Imagine the utopian flow of Vainqueur. Remember that Monolake record you bought a couple of weeks ago? The point is, Purelink’s ‘Signs’ has many obvious reference points, and for some, this is gonna be absolute heaven. This Chicago trio has really mastered the art of melting a hypnotic slomo groove into syrupy sweet ambiance. And these guys are just now releasing their debut full-length, so who’s to say where they’ll take this sound in future. For now, heaven should be good enough for anyone.

The latest by Chicago trio Purelink unspools an alchemical suite of fractal ambient, dusted dub tech, and interstitial electronica, born from a spirit of unity and flux: “All hands on the mixer, forever finding the sound.” Since forming in 2020, Tommy Paslaski (aka Concave Reflection), Ben Paulson (aka kindtree), and Akeem Asani (aka Millia) have convened regularly in a shared studio to workshop, swap samples, and hone their collective muse via “the endless possibilities of a laptop,” seeking “something different than we would make on our own.”

Distilled from extended compositions prepared and performed across 2022 in Chicago, Kansas City, New York, and Los Angeles, Signs captures their chemistry at its most liquid and immaterial, mapped in mutating systems of glitch, glass, rhythm, and space. It’s music alternately subdued and subterranean, elevated and remote, attuned to the flickering sentience of outer spheres.