SPEEED, CLAUDE - Infinity Ultra (Sealed) (CD)

Claude Speeed returns to Planet Mu with his second album 'Infinity Ultra'. He describes the record he's been creating since he started making computer music as one "conceiving an interior territory: an abstract space to process the oppression, confusion and insanity of the contemporary age; and to formulate an honest emotional and artistic response - a psychic jumping off point into an uncertain future." 'Infinity Ultra' takes inspiration from sleep paralysis, monumental artworks, children's anime, abandoned places, ghostly rave pasts and terrifying silicon valley futures, and the limitless anger of the digital present. These influences have been channelled into an impressionistic burst of varied creativity: Shimmering VSTs; monolithic noise; euphoric blocks of colourful sound; trance stabs and the citrus rush of hardcore; towering drones, and skynet math rock - all rendered against cold, sinister space and nostalgic synth melodies. The album reveals the artist's Scottish roots, viewed at a hazy distance from his Berlin home - a series of memories of Glasgow's experimental psychedelic underground, its DIY rock scene and defiant club hedonism. These genre relationships are blurred and at times they contrast with audible brutality; the result is a hybrid, sculptured way of rendering music - minimal specifics, maximum emotions.