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2000
Com Plex
About This Album
From the quiet confines of Portland suburb Beaverton, one doesn't expect an explosion of blistering ambience to emerge, but that is precisely what the debut album from the Helio Sequence creates. Following a self-released EP, Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel holed up in the one room music store from which both collect their regular paychecks and returned with this lovely, challenging full-length, engineered, produced, mixed, and mastered by the duo themselves. With Summers playing guitar and singing and Weikel handling the drums as well as the sequenced keyboards and samplers, Com Plex lives up to its name, an ambitious and amorphous concoction. The music is frequently surreal, as recognizable sounds warp into unshapely ones, and it reflects back at itself creating spectacular mechanistic feedback. "Stacenska 612," for instance, is a spooky web of futuristic ambience, and the vocals, doubled and whispered, tusseling and intertwined like vines, come across like the voices inside your head. It is not exactly the wall of glorious caterwaul that My Bloody Valentine created, nor the austere moonscapes of Pink Floyd, although both bands are decided influences. Interestingly enough, the band that the Helio Sequence most recall insinuate in an odd way is mid-period Beatles.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,5,7 and 9)

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