Visionist (Louis Carnell) exists in a trend-space that constantly warps, flips, turns inside-out. See the covers of his two EPs, I’m Fine and I’m Fine Part II. Blue and turquoise liquid pixel forms, one coiled, the other blown apart, individual bits pressurized to their melting point, caught in flow. The images are something like the artist’s imagining of the music-sphere — in rapid flux, but frozen, briefly. Visionist is one of the imminent synthesizers of contemporary electronic music.
After those two touchstone EPs and releases on Ramp, Leisure System, and Left Blank, Carnell is finally releasing his first album as Visionist through long-affiliated label-of-all-labels PAN. Safe, featuring that elegiac portrait of Carnell white-washed and laminated/submerged on its cover, “traces the arc of an anxiety attack, from its onset through to recovery.” “We are taught that a life of no worries is better for us, and therefore we try to create on that is ‘Safe’,” he says. “Comfort, protection, salvation — this is what we search for.”
Carnell has explored anxiety through his music before. The I’m Fine EPs are both sheened with a tense coolness, like they’re flexing to keep rhythms and melodies in such crystal order. Safe, however, is meant to be “his most personal statement yet.”
Recent Visionist endeavors include a PAN sub-label called Codes (a reboot of his original Lost Codes) and runway soundtracks for designers Liam Hodges and Roxanne Farahmand.
Safe drops October 9 in vinyl, CD, and digital formats. Check out the first single, “Victim,” below.
Safe tracklist:
01. You Stayed
02. Victim
03. 1 Guarda
04. I’ve Said
05. Vffected
06. Sin-cere
07. Safe
08. Let Me In
09. Too Careful To Care
10. Tired Tears, Awake Fears
11. Constraint
12. Sleep Luxury
• Visionist: https://www.facebook.com/1Visionist
• PAN: http://p-a-n.org