Olympic Mess is Luke Younger's third outing for the ever-stunning PAN imprint, tailing closely behind last year's The Hollow Organ EP and the stupefying Impossible Symmetry album from the year before that. Apparently inspired by a lengthy period in which the artist immersed himself in genres as diverse as loop-fuelled industrial, dub techno and Balearic disco, this album finds Younger's corroded electro-acoustic Weltschmerz tamed by smoother, more musical tones and an overall lightened constitution.
"I Exist in a Fog" begins with harrowing drones and squelching, but by mid-point evolves into a hypnotic cascade of synthetic chords, while the appealingly sequenced frequencies of the title track disguise minute shards of static buried deep inside the mix. "Sky Wax (NYC)" evokes a late cab ride home to the bad side of town after a night of debauched revelry in the heart of an unknown city. That Younger — who, alongside Steven Warwick (Heatsick), founded noise duo Birds of Delay — is venturing into shinier, happier territory shouldn't really be sounding any alarm bells: Olympic Mess isn't a complete shift in direction for him. It's merely one step toward the outer rim of a very large and very dark shadow.
(Pan)"I Exist in a Fog" begins with harrowing drones and squelching, but by mid-point evolves into a hypnotic cascade of synthetic chords, while the appealingly sequenced frequencies of the title track disguise minute shards of static buried deep inside the mix. "Sky Wax (NYC)" evokes a late cab ride home to the bad side of town after a night of debauched revelry in the heart of an unknown city. That Younger — who, alongside Steven Warwick (Heatsick), founded noise duo Birds of Delay — is venturing into shinier, happier territory shouldn't really be sounding any alarm bells: Olympic Mess isn't a complete shift in direction for him. It's merely one step toward the outer rim of a very large and very dark shadow.
