Around the turn of the millennium, a sharp music journalist described Radiohead’s output as the swept-together remnants of a factory. If that were true, then the nine tracks on Cantor’s Paradise by DJ Trystero would be that factory’s forgotten dream. (And just to get the Radiohead comparison out of the way: this factory isn’t even in the same industrial zone.)
The sounds on this record trace what once was – in faint, dotted lines. The Tokyo-based artist blends minimal techno, ambient and dub into an architecture of the forgotten. Fittingly, none of the tracks have titles. It doesn’t come across as mysterious, just utterly logical.
Cantor’s Paradise starts off tangible – rhythms, effects, structure. But by track eight, the crickets are already chirping, and everything else sounds like a storm out of shape. What keeps it all from feeling arbitrary is the album’s atmospheric coherence. This music isn’t about hopelessness. It contains something that comes after forgetting – inarticulacy. (Hence the lack of titles.) And after that: silence, swallowing everything. A catalogue of nine dark, subtle, miniature resistances. One of the most beguiling dreams of these days – and easy to get lost in.
Cantor's Paradise
