Vortexual

Variant is a solo project of Stephen Hitchell, who is one half of the massively influential Echospace project with DeepChord's Rod Modell. Their landmark 2007 album The Coldest Season on the celebrated Modern Love imprint was named album of the year in over 40 different magazines around the world and was listed as one of "The Best Albums Of The Decade" in Resident Advisor. The Detroit/Chicago duo also record under a variety of monikers (cv313, DeepChord presents Echospace, Intrusion, and Phase90), but Hitchell uses the Variant project to release his more long-form ambient dub and ambient techno recordings. Variant's albums invoke various celestial phenomena ranging from comets to stars to the aurora borealis. The cosmic preoccupation plays out in the music too, which ranges from warm analog space ambient infused with field recordings to more rhythmically active synthesizer loops and drones. On this edition (Element Five) he closes in on nearly 70 minutes of celestial magic; spellbinding and enchanting, this is a soundtrack for dreams. This dives deep into analog exploration, taking footnotes while pushing sonic boundaries to the future. This is the realm of sonic mysticism, a place where one can breathe, pray, love, and drift away into the ether. Cloud-surfing an electric wave of vibration pulses in slow motion, flotation of the soul. The newly inspired elements of this series bridge the gap between modular movements of the '70s and the reflective atmospherics of dream sphere. Cosmic sonic therapy. The sound simply floats around you while drifting thru the vortex.