Calls for chill-out areas at raves have been growing louder again of late. Alongside acts such as Eden Aurelius, who recently released their outstanding debut LP Entre Nous, trance specialist Mikkel Rev also delves into ambient and techno – ambient techno, in other words – but with a greater emphasis on melody. Evocation may have been created in the forests of Norway, but Boards of Canada loom large throughout this journey. This is particularly evident in the atmospheric moments of majestic bass rumbling.
This album, however, is more than just a copy of an extremely well-known template. In fact, one finds oneself mentally transported to the chill-out sessions mentioned at the outset, because Mikkel Rev intends it to be a rave, yet his production relieves it of any sense of compulsion. In other words: beats are barely present, or exist only as a seedbed for the offshoots of pantheistic analogue bubbling. Trance vocals fade into nothingness. The tracks form an eternally undulating horizontal plane, in which one can chat away about everything under the sun and simply linger. On Evocation, ‘trance’ refers to more than just a state of mind. »The Infinite«—for once, a track with a four-to-the-floor kick—speaks almost exactly the same ethereal language of prog basslines and piano motifs as in days gone by; it could just as easily have come from the heyday of trance in the nineties, when catharsis in electronic dance music was no longer implicit but resonated explicitly. The closing track, »Sanatorium«, repeatedly hints at breakbeats, yet with its striking apocalyptic chorales pursues only one goal: healing, from whatever it may be.
Evocation
