*Lanzarote* arrives as PSTMRD's second full-length, and the progression from his debut reveals an artist increasingly comfortable inhabiting negative space. Where many electronic producers mistake busyness for complexity, PSTMRD understands the compositional power of restraint. The opening "Intro" establishes this sensibility immediately—sparse pulses and distant harmonic shimmer that suggest landscape rather than impose narrative.
"Fullmoon," the album's advance single and its most immediate offering, demonstrates PSTMRD's historical literacy without succumbing to nostalgia. The track's rhythmic architecture clearly owes debts to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works period, particularly in its use of offsetting metric patterns that create subtle disorientation. Yet the production palette extends beyond mere homage. High-frequency digital residue—those glitch artifacts and bit-crushed textures—recall Ryoji Ikeda's microscopic precision, while warm analogue drift grounds the composition in the vintage traditions of Tangerine Dream's sequencer epics. It's a deft synthesis, and one that refuses to privilege any single aesthetic genealogy.
The album's conceptual anchor to Lanzarote's volcanic terrain proves more than marketing copy. "Volcano" and "Peaks" both employ modular synthesis to evoke geological processes—the former building tension through accumulating layers of distorted low-end rumble, the latter achieving something approaching sublimity through its slow-motion crescendos. PSTMRD's instrumental choices (Make Noise Strega, Soma Terra, Waldorf Iridium) facilitate this materialist approach to sound design. These aren't tools selected for brand cachet but for their capacity to generate unpredictable, organic textures.
"Dune," featuring vocals by Francesca Bisacchi, offers the album's most conventionally melodic moment, though "conventional" remains relative. Bisacchi's voice arrives treated and distant, less a focal point than another textural element within PSTMRD's stratified mix. The track recalls the subdued vocoder experiments of early Boards of Canada or the ghosted transmissions of The Advisory Circle—voices as memory traces rather than human presence.
The album's centrepiece, the twelve-minute title track "Lanzarote," demands and rewards sustained attention. PSTMRD constructs the piece as a series of slow transformations, each section bleeding into the next through careful sound design. Martino Marini's mixing proves crucial here, maintaining clarity amid dense layering while preserving the composition's sense of vast spatial depth. The track moves through phases—amelodic drones giving way to rhythmic fragments, which themselves dissolve into shimmering ambience—charting a course that feels both carefully plotted and wonderfully inevitable.
Joan Arnau Pàmies' mastering deserves particular mention. Too often, electronic albums suffer from competitive loudness or digital harshness. Here, the dynamic range breathes, allowing PSTMRD's detailed production work to register with proper impact. The low-end particularly benefits, carrying weight without bloat.
*Lanzarote* positions PSTMRD within a lineage of European electronic artists—from Eno's ambient experiments through Warp Records' mid-90s innovations to contemporary modular practitioners—while maintaining its own distinctive character. This is electronic music that values atmosphere over aggression, suggestion over statement. Like the island that inspired it, the album rewards those willing to explore its stark beauty, revealing depths beneath its austere surface. PSTMRD has crafted a genuinely immersive listening experience, one that operates on geological rather than algorithmic time.