Sonic Review: Daze of Heaven - 1111/Live at Elysium
DOH’s latest release, euphoniously titled “1111 [eleven-eleven] / Live at Elysium,” is a mix of structured songs melting into and emerging from beautiful minimal dark synth soup, in a more or less continuous stream, complete with overarching themes revisited throughout. The live sound quality of this recording is fantastic- it was obviously recorded with room mics rather than from being plugged directly into the sound board, and the space comes across in the recording, doing fantastic things. First, the space is super cool, and being in it, you feel cool, detached, cinematic and futuristic. The space also creates the canvas into which the samples and the ambient sound are interwoven and pulled back again. Daze of Heaven makes what I would generally consider art music; this album is likely his most accessible to date, at points overflowing with nuggets of pop gold, and perhaps the single “Alice” encapsulates everything wonderful about this record into a remarkably re-listenable cross-section, with all the markings of an instant classic. “Alice” comes across as the song you would put on a mix for your friends, it’s the would-be chart-topping hit from the alternate universe in which John Hughes directs “Blade Runner.” You could probably get away with putting this album on at a gathering of normal people- it’s in the right tempo range, and you can dance to it. None of the electronic sounds fall into the dance music trap of becoming too familiar, boring the music head, though some sounds are undoubtedly too harsh to avoid completely upsetting your roommates who just want to unwind after work and listen to Van Morrison.
