Cerpintxt’s “microtubule encoded memory” is Heavy Listening
By Deuce
The great beyond, such as it is perceived by mere mortals, becomes palpable, and imminent, within a minute or two of checking out the latest release from Cerpintxt, an EP entitled “microtubule encoded memory”. “dweller in the eye” is a second cut that rounds out the digital release.
The tune is incomprehensible, and deliberately so. It occupies the better part of 20 minutes. It’s a pastiche of murmuring, monks chanting, and stringed instruments that seemingly defy description.
Most of all, it moves like the breath of life itself. Slowly. Rhythmically. In and out, with an ebbing and flowing cadence reminiscent of the seashore—or outer space.
The tune washes over you with a heady sense of deepness, spellbinding (if not incanting) the listener into a somnambulatory state. The artist takes the first three minutes to warm up with an eldritch chanting that might involve real voices, synthetic ones, or no voices at all. There may be a hint of deep strings in the mix functioning as the bass; at one point, a barrage of voices—overpoweringly loud, heavily effected, and to the point that the meaning of what they’re conveying becomes indiscernible—washes over you.
But all of these sounds come and go, building to a crescendo every 10 seconds or so, before receding into the silence, the darkness, the cave of creation in which they were wrought. The centerpiece is the emergence of a different stringed instrument, which sounds suspiciously like a piano in parts but more than likely resembles some version of a guitar, punctuating the output of sound as it exhales. It serves up a much needed sense of levity, completing the transcendent, dream-like appeal the artist is going for, laving itself in the other sounds at times, at others triumphing over them while reigning alone.
The sense of mystery, the inexhaustible search for it, has never been more acutely depicted.
“dweller” revisits many of the same themes, minus the swelling and declension in which the “music” coruscates. It focuses on what sounds like a motor running, at times opening up with what could be the passing of an airplane above, while still coming with those indecipherable, rippling vocals. In this respect it’s a suitable follow-up to “memory”, and another foray into the unexplored.
