After building a reputation in the outer realms of underground techno, the elusive Gwenan Spearing takes a sharp left turn with her new project phase space, debuting with the ambient EP Degrees of Freedom. Departing from the skeletal club rhythms she’s known for, Spearing dives into slow-moving, generative electronics.
The record leans into an uncanny sort of busy spaciousness. Across its six tracks, acoustic fragments are sampled, bent, and re-stitched through modular synths, forming immersive soundscapes that sit somewhere between machine logic and dream-state intuition. On opener ‘Sync’, what might once have been cowbells are stretched into submerged pulses across angular, meandering spikes, echoing through liquid textures. ‘Some Pluck’ eddies slowly with tones that evoke refracted steel pans, but nothing here is quite what it seems.
Spearing does not seem to chase perfection in Degrees of Freedom – she lets the circuits breathe, allowing time signatures to warp and textures to overlap organically. The result is a beautiful tension: ‘Generator I’ bathes you in a strangely wistful melody and soft horns, and over the course of nearly ten minutes, keys clutter and stumble gently – almost clumsily – around it.
‘Sleep Pressure’ folds in the soft clang of processed metal, like wind chimes caught in an off-kilter gravity. Even on the closer, ‘Generator II’, the record’s most serene moment, delicate digital fuzz clings to the edges, resulting in spattered, docile beeps. It’s a subtle, surreal touch that prevents the EP from ever feeling too comfortable.
Degrees of Freedom is a strong first ambient offering from phase space, where sounds are meticulously sculpted, but meander through time as it slows down into a spiral – subterranean, yet pulsing with life.
Follow Gwenan Spearing:
