Neil Reinalda, back to working his ass of to get your ass working its ass off… to ambient music? Sure, why not. As PHORK, the LA-based producer has been sculpting a sound that is as peripherally pleasing as it is intensely focused and detailed, chopping hazy atmospheres and found sounds into restless microbeats for an impressive (if modest) run of cassette releases over the past couple of years. Here, for his debut vinyl affair on NNA (a label he’s worked with twice, previously), that sound is more realized than ever and its intended effect — the tension that comes with the push/pull of aesthetic opposites — is palpably felt; weightlessness feels massive, smoothness feels bumpy, laziness feels like it’s the hardest job in the world. And yes, it is tense, and yes, it is also relaxing: a place where you can break a sweat blinking or where your index finger gets to do its own little dance, disco ball lights strobing across the second knuckle. Today we’ve got the drop on the first taste of High End with the video for “Contact,” a nice visual rendering by Marco Braunschweiler of Reinalda’s rapid fire editing to infer motion, progression, and unity from disparate, dissimilar static building blocks. Peep it below and watch for the record’s release this June. OR scope the SoundCloud here for the “Contact” single.
• PHORK: http://slow-rave.tumblr.com
• NNA Tapes: http://nnatapes.com