Exodus unfurls as an undulating fugue as Nexciya creates an impressionistic soundscape that flickers inward but is touched by the outside world. Divided into 13 discrete tracks, Exodus flows like a single piece. Prosaic titles —“pond,” “meadow,” “relic,” “tears,” “ocean,” — give scant clue to the evocative associations and connections of the music. Dove treats the landscape as a living entity animated by memory. He captures the hope and dread of the emigrant journey as well as the drifting attention of the travelers. Caught between the familiar and strange, haunted by memories and focused on dreams of better lives. His music has a mercurial, shapeshifting feel. It oozes and writhes free of structure. Layers of intricately mixed synths and drones, punctuated by both natural and man-made samples. The burble of water, the wind in all its variations, the chattering of birds and animals. Voices emerge, excited, fearful, imposing. We remember this is a Black exodus across a hostile land. Most of all, however, the sense of space, Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier beckons beyond the desert with its the one road towns rusting in the shimmering heat, beyond the rivers, forests, and mountains. Then finally the great thrumming metropolis blotting the way to the ocean. Exodus culminates in the 10 plus minutes of “lineage” in which Nexcyia adopts a more pointedly frictive approach to his material. Here we feel the fault lines of history, psychology, and topography chafing, picking at wounds. The drones emanate from deep in the earth, a voice laments, the shimmering higher registers give way to scrape and squeak. It’s part reckoning, part lament, part purge. A reminder that history and memory are entwined and we can never completely free ourselves from whence we came.