Emerging from a decade-long hiatus, East Coast electronic producer and multi-instrumentalist, Sybarite, returns with Waver The Absolute. Following his lone, lush album on 4AD, Sybarite released the odd-and-ends collection, Cut Out Shape, before receding into his studio to focus on soundtrack and freelance work. In 2009 he formed the dream-pop duo, Bell Horses, with Jenny Owen Youngs, and released a leftfield cassette as Christian Hawkins in 2012. The long break from Hawkins' Sybarite project seems to have done him some good, as Waver The Absolute is unquestionably his strongest and most cohesive work to date. The aesthetic shifts from Sybarite's early 0s work to Waver The Absolute are immediately apparent with the opening track - an in-your-face wall of harsh static and fuzz that evolves into a distant, almost blissful transmission. From there Hawkins slips effortlessly but uncharacteristically into dancefloor mode with a pair of tracks that stretch the limits and lengths of what we used to expect from Sybarite. Waver The Absolute defies genre and expectation, and the eclecticism serves it well. The marriage of the electronic and the organic has been one that Hawkins has expertly manipulated since his days in the legendary Silver Apples in the late 1990s. On Waver The Absolute, he uses his Sybarite moniker to expand and explore that union in exhilarating and rewarding new ways. Both CD and LP formats are packaged in full-color jackets with metallic silver overprints.
