SEQUENCES
“Carapace” C19
(Dinzu Artefacts)




What, you want stability? No you don’t – I know for a fact that you don’t. You want instability because instability brings surprise. Yeah, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but you never expect it, and that’s the key. Sequences is in no mood to deliver upon expectation, instead opting to traffic in diversions, only to pull out the proverbial rug when you think you’ve got him pegged. Niels Geybels, the Belgian behind the Sequences brand, allows us to observe, through nineteen minutes of tenuous constancy, what the churning lagoon sounds like from beneath the waves. But please remove all ideas of pacific beachbound  meditation – there’s not a grain of white sand nor a palm tree within [earshot] of this release. I shouldn’t have to warn you so explicitly – I figured the terms “instability” and “tenuous constancy” would do the trick. You can never be too careful.

The cassette’s cover image provides all the visual cues you need to submerge yourself and allow the currents to move you. Tones oscillate and overwhelm, and sometimes recede for clarity. Changes occur on a dime, with tracks often not reaching three minutes in length, allowing Geybels to fiddle with perception as the whim strikes. Let it happen – there’s no resisting the movement, the pull, the expanse greater than comprehension. Consider the perspective of a turtle or a crustacean, whose titular shell protects it on its path through life. The wide ocean beyond the immediate vicinity is an unfathomable distance. Impose upon the creature’s tiny mind the philosophy of meaning and its place within the space, and you break it. Carapace exists until it, too, breaks, fleeting, active, violent, ultimately unstable, never disappointing.



--Ryan Masteller