Music Monday: It’s Spring, Let’s Emerge!

Every springtime I find myself gravitating towards various kinds of psychedelia. Perhaps it’s that the rebirth of the world is in confluence with the constant flux and distance the music suggests; perhaps, rather, it’s the return of color to what had been the bleak midwinter. Regardless, one of my favorite albums to listen to this time of year is Pye Corner Audio’s 2022 surprise Let’s Emerge!

The album came out in July of that year and I think there may have been a rhyme between the album’s evocation of spring’s growth and rebirth and the reemergence of many from pandemic induced hibernation.

Let’s Emerge! is Pye Corner Audio’s – known to his mother and his friends as Martin Jenkins – fifth studio album, and it is indeed a surprise.

See, starting in 2010, Jenkins had cornered the market on murky electronic music at grooveable, but not necessarily club-appropriate, tempos awash with enough flutter and wow to have almost certainly been mastered to saturated tape. Many of those attributes can be used to describe Let’s Emerge! but right from the opener “De-Hibernate” there are elements which have been entirely missing from his previous work: those being the presence of guitar and the human voice.

This is more ambient shoegaze than techno, blissfully bright and expectant with nary a kick drum – or any other, for that matter – to be found. When the music is propelled, it is by arpeggiating synths driving the tune rather than any traditional percussive element, until the final track, that is.

The sonic touchstones seem to be the notion of a chill, beatless, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine or the “Electric Mainline” from Spiritualized’s Pure Phase.

You have to get to the third track, “Does it Go Dark?” to find a song that could be comfortable on a different Pye corner Audio release.

The next track, “Haze Loops,” is a drifting, elevating, almost prayerful or meditative tune, perfect for the budding of trees and the hum of bumble bees out in nature, away from our screens, our artificial digital world and the strife and care of modernity.

“Let’s Emerge (Part One)” epitomizes the hopefulness of potential which imagines itself unimpacted by the setbacks and obstacles of reality. It sounds the way we imagine things were meant to be. 

Before we return to “Let’s Emerge (Part Two)” we get the Boards of Canada-esque “Saturation Point” and “Sun Stroke,” each an excellent continuation of the album’s theme. “Let’s Emerge (Part Two)” rather than starting with the ocean waves and white noise of it’s fellow, is a remarkable jointed collection of otherwise disjointed sounds: reversed guitars, analogue bleeps and bloops and the like: All of which manages to reflect the other half of the title track remarkably well. The album settles here, I think, like an old house on its foundation.

The last twelve minutes of the album are essential. “Luminescence” builds the tension and “Warmth of the Sun” provides the ecstatic, blissful release. The latter contains actual lyrics. Though they are simply the repetition of the title, this is ground Martin Jenkins has heretofore never trod. It’s a perfect ending to a wonderful listen.

Highly recommended, every spring.