Product Description
2 siderius
3 yrsta-fiirn
4 absrpt/nline
5 myrskiiyinen
6 there is no sun
7 unsettled apsis
8 anexslom
9 pare
Genres: ambient, new age, downtempo
RIYL: Jon Hopkins, Rudy Adrian, and the ambient works of David Sylvian
an extremely slow motion explosion is the debut ambient release from yttriphie (Michael Plaster of soulwhirlingsomewhere, the legendary 90s Projekt ethereal act). Following a nearly 20-year absence, Michael returns with vapory music that is mellow and muted. The album’s long waves of atmospheric crescendos sometimes nearly fall away to silence, while at other times they trace out clear paths in diverging passages. Soft, synthesized patches wade their way in and out of laceworks of thick, incandescent clouds. Pianos knell quietly over crystalline pads. Gentle, feathery, sunless, isolated, dreamy.
Michael reflects, “I want the experience of listening to the music to be like going into a tranquil, flowing river. I want it to be muted enough that it can take you along effortlessly, but I also want it to be complex enough that one can be swallowed by the melodies like little shrouded stories being slowly woven together.
“Without getting too sciency, the album title concerns how everything in existence — literally every THING — is an explosion. Like a time-directed flow of energy being released. Whether chemical, atomic, electrical, whatever… it’s all simply energy trying to dissipate. The law of entropy. From the massive big bang that created the universe down to your blood cells releasing co2, it’s all just flow. An unceasing emptying out of every single particle. Kinda sad, really.”
Beautiful vapory music filled with longing and atmosphere.
Pronunciation guide from Michael: “yttriphie? Oh, it is pronounced IH-tri-fee. Think of the word ‘atrophy,’ but switch out the A for an Ih (like ‘Insist’). And yes i made it up.”
Reviews Editor –
From Chain DLK
Michael Plaster, the ethereal alchemist behind soulwhirlingsomewhere, resurfaces after a two-decade hiatus with a meditative plunge into ambient soundscapes under the enigmatic moniker “yttriphie”. Pronounced “IH-tri-fee” (like “atrophy” but with a whisper of insistence), his debut ambient release An Extremely Slow Motion Explosion is a cosmic lullaby for entropy itself, carrying the listener along its gentle currents of decay and beauty.
From the first shimmering note of “oh”, it’s clear this is no ordinary ambient record. The album feels like walking through the memory of a dream that wasn’t yours but somehow still haunts you. Plaster’s fascination with entropy – our universal destiny to dissipate – imbues every track with a quiet poignancy.
Take “siderius”, a celestial drift that hums like starlight filtering through the void. Its layers are delicate but deliberate, creating the sensation of falling upward into the unknown. Meanwhile, “yrsta-fiirn” evokes the cold majesty of a glacier carving its way into history – a hymn for ice that knows its eventual fate.
The album’s centerpiece, “anexslom”, stretches to nearly 12 minutes, a sprawling meditation that builds from barely-there whispers to a crescendo that feels as if it’s gazing at the heat death of the universe and sighing, “Well, I suppose that’s fair”.
But for all its conceptual weight, An Extremely Slow Motion Explosion never feels ponderous. Plaster’s knack for melody shines through even in the album’s most vaporous moments. The piano on “there is no sun” knells with a somber intimacy, while “unsettled apsis” dances on crystalline pads that shimmer like frost under moonlight.
Plaster’s return to music after twenty years is like a message in a bottle washed ashore: wistful, timeless, and deeply personal. He wants us to hear the entropy in the air, the flow of everything falling apart yet coming together in its own sublime way.
For fans of Sigur Rós’ quieter moments or the ambient meditations of David Sylvian, An Extremely Slow Motion Explosion is a tranquil, immersive experience that rewards both passive listening and introspective wandering. It’s not just an album – it’s a river you can step into, again and again, and never find the same water twice. -Vito Camarretta
Reviews Editor –
From Rockerilla
Michael Plaster, aka Soul Whirling Somewhere, has an enigmatic new name to release his music under: yttriphie. After a break that lasted more than twenty years, Plaster returned to collaborate with his friend Sam Rosenthal on his timeless Black Tape For A Blue Girl and to release a new album of vaporous ambient, An Extremely Slow Motion Explosion. Nine songs for sixty minutes of suspensions that get stuck between the throat and the lungs, capable of revealing unknown universes in the blink of an eye. Explosions of ‘chemical, atomic, electrical’ energy, transformed into dirges of IRRESISTIBLE AMBIENT MUSIC. -Roberto Mandolini
Reviews Editor –
From Lux Atenea
After his extraordinary musical project Soulwhirlingsomewhere and his collaborations with the legendary musical band Black Tape For A Blue Girl, next Friday, January 24th, the brilliant American artist Michael Plaster will officially present the debut album An extremely slow motion explosion of his new musical project Yttriphie. Published through the legendary record label Projekt Records in digital format, the album “An extremely slow motion explosion has been adorned with this elegant cover design where the plasticity of the image acquires this absolutely hypnotic chromatic harmony. A perfect visual beauty to visually describe the virtuosity in musical composition shown by Michael Plaster in the nine songs that make up his debut album. A conceptual avant-garde eclecticism where styles such as ambient and downtempo acquire a new sound dimension, transforming their hearing into a mental journey to another world, to another reality, through the brilliance in the definition of musical structures where artistic beauty is adored. This is how music-loving readers of Lux Atenea can enjoy it when they purchase this album, available on the official Projekt Records page on Bandcamp. A fascinating immersion in the most current and pioneering musical innovation from the hand of one of the artists who have left their indelible interpretive mark on the Projekt label, reborn like a radiant phoenix after two decades of mental and artistic empowerment oriented towards sound harmony. Inspired by the incessant movement and transformation that exists in this constantly changing universe, the album “An extremely slow motion explosion” is an elegant musical recreation of that universal impulse where nothing remains immutable, where nothing lasts forever, and where the cycle of creation and destruction never stops turning and advancing, shaping everything that surrounds us in our environment and, even, internally, our body, our mind, our vital energy… This is the artistic greatness of Michael Plaster culminated in this debut album as Yttriphie.
We begin listening to this musical delicacy by immersing ourselves in the sound atmosphere of the first track, “Oh,” where everything will vibrate stealthily in this composition until the entrance of this instrumental plane for piano, with a languid and slow presence that will be accompanied by a melancholic instrumental plane for strings with an existential background in the past. The composition “Oh” is a decadent sound harmonization in an eclectic conceptual key where styles such as downtempo, ambient, and contemporary music are intertwined, projecting a reflective atmosphere where the present is totally conditioned by that still latent past. Then, the track “Siderius” will turn this ambient style into a spiritual dawn where melodic iridescences transform this musical scene into an evanescence of intoxicating beauty for our mind. A luminous crescendo that will increase its energy until it blurs the shapes and dimensions as if it were an attempt to bring the celestial to this space-time. A spectacular musical composition that will delight music-loving readers of Lux Atenea who seek in music that harmonious sound beauty completely removed from the dense, the material, the physical. The theme “Yrsta-fiirn” will appear much more solemn with that density in the air typical of summer afternoons, evolving musically with that laxity that leads to mental intoxication, losing the heavy sensation of the physical during that space of time as if the environment were inexorably dissolving. “Yrsta-fiirn” incites calm, to close the eyes and let the mind flow in those thoughts that reveal, and that distance the Self from the human until entering that intermediate mental state between wakefulness and dreaminess. With the track “Absrpt/nline” leading this sound dynamic towards darker musical terrain, here the ambient style fused with downtempo becomes somewhat dark, maintaining the languid as a deformation of a reality that refuses to disappear. Hence the vaporous atmosphere that is breathed in this environment as if time wanted to abandon it. If we had to put a soundtrack to the Kingdom of Hades, the track “Absrpt/nline” would be one of the most harmonious choices.
With the song “Myrskiiyinen” featuring a more complex musical structure, the melodic presence of this piano will take us back to the melancholic as if it were the vision of a stormy rainy afternoon from behind a window. That blurred luminosity that provokes mental glances to the past and even existential spotlights on reality itself, on life itself, make the excellent song “Myrskiiyinen” one of the most innovative and attractive of this album, of course, with a melancholic sound charge that must be taken into account when listening to it. Later, the song “There is no sun” will appear in a heavenly and idyllic way, completely clearing the grey atmosphere of the previous song. An entry into the sacred, into that atmosphere that is breathed inside the temple when we visit it and it is empty, while the light from the stained glass windows illuminate its interior. Resplendent in its sonic evolution, the song “There is no sun” will surprise the music-loving reader of Lux Atenea with its hieraticism that will lead him to that state of mental sensitivity where music expands, where these melodious musical planes calm the thoughts, reorienting them towards that spiritual harmony so comforting where everything external is irrelevant. Leading into the song “Unsettled apsis”, the sacred will continue to be latent in this beautiful composition but with more fragile sound columns that bring it closer to the earthly. It is like seeing the celestial from the ground, raising your gaze to be fascinated by what you see but knowing that it is unattainable. Moments where longings appear to be immediately surpassed by harsh reality, everything becoming fleeting like the flame of a match shortly after being lit. With the track “Anexslom” giving a sense of crystalline fragility to this environment, here the sound experimentation is much clearer and more magical thanks to the expert artistic hands of Michael Plaster, creating a totally eclectic musical structure in its conceptual dimension until turning the track “Anexslom” into the most innovative of the entire album. Finally, the track “Pare” will take us to the epilogue of this musical work with a creative look where the sound is polished to its most brilliant state of artistic finesse, transforming this composition into a true delight. An extremely slow motion explosion, another discographic gem is presented again through the legendary American label Projekt Records to continue fascinating us with its musical charm. Enjoy it!!! -Félix V. Díaz
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
All lower case: yttriphie, and each of the letters are reversed (per the album front cover). It’s the ambient music project of Michael Plaster from 90s shoegaze act soulwhirlingsomewhere, based in Arizona. It’s been around a while, with a couple of download releases in 2013 and 2016 respectively, but an extremely slow motion explosion (also all lower case) is the project’s first release for Projekt Archive. Since you were about to ask, here is the pronunciation guide per Mr. Plaster: IH-tri-fee. (Think of the word ‘atrophy,’ but switch out the A for a short I). Got that? Now let’s get to the music on the nine tracks at hand… ‘an extremely slow explosion’ is the perfect description for this beautiful and immersive experience, warm and soothing, soft to the ears and never jarring, things are always changing, but the pace is very slow, like walking (or floating) into a dream, or even just an expanded thought that the listener can easily get lost within, like a warm fog that slowly moves over a peaceful, tranquil river as night falls and the moon rises behind it. The journey through the album’s nine tracks doesn’t require any effort, it’s just a natural process; one can listen closely to the sonic events that are happening, trying to figure it out as you go, or just flow with it like a dream, and let it take you there. As for how this was produced, those facts are not revealed in the notes, but it’s obviously embraced with a lot of synthesizer power, some delicate touches of piano, swirling atmospherics, and a blend of other sounds (some muted percussion on “myrskiiyinen” for example), even soft angelic voices can be heard in some places — all heavily processed of course. Everything comes in just right, light and dark and muted colors hovering in perfect balance as they cycle around you and unfold, not too smooth and creamy, but definitely something of a soft psychedelic mind-melt that can hold a listener’s interest over the long haul. -Peter Thelen
Reviews Editor –
From Opus
Soulwhirlingsomewhere’s Michael Plaster returns with a new album filled with lush, evocative ambience and atmospherics.
I’ve written quite a bit about my love for Soulwhirlingsomewhere’s evocative ambience, and in particular, 1993’s Eating the Sea, one of my favorite albums of all time. The brainchild of Michael Plaster, Soulwhirlingsomewhere only released a handful of albums, the last one being 2001’s Please Sennd Help. (2004’s The Great Barrier was a retrospective compilation.)
Plaster would occasionally hint at a fifth album titled Almost, but fans’ hopes for new music were essentially dashed in 2017 when he announced that he was shutting down Soulwhirlingsomewhere and “[closing] that chapter of my life.” Instead, he got involved in other projects, including The Mineral Tap, an acoustic-oriented duo with drummer Jason Farrell that performed Mark Eitzel-esque ballads as well as guest vocalist for Black Tape For a Blue Girl and Exit.
Yttriphie, however, is Soulwhirlingsomewhere’s true successor. Pronounced like “atrophy” but starting with “ih,” Yttriphie finds Plaster delving into the same lush soundscapes — which should come as no surprise. The slowly unfurling “Siderius,” for instance, evokes latter-day Soulwhirlingsomewhere (e.g., “The Wedding” and “Nani” from Please Sennd Help) as well as VidnaObmana’s contemplative stillness.
One major difference becomes immediately apparent, though: the absence of Plaster’s yearning vocals and confessional lyrics. Yttriphie’s debut An Extremely Slow Motion Explosion is an entirely instrumental affair, and though I do miss hearing Plaster’s voice, he fills the extra space with an occasional downtempo beat or texture.
“Absrpt/Nline” travels along a twilit periphery, its meandering ambience tinged with an eeriness that’s not all that dissimilar from Marconi Union’s subdued-yet-haunting electronica; the same beguiling eeriness resurfaces on album closer “Pare.” Highlight “Myrskiiyinen” weaves in sparse piano notes, an echo of shuffling beats, and the sounds of rain, becoming the album’s emotional core as it slowly unfolds over eight minutes. Later, “Unsettled Apsis” envisions Steve Roach’s landmark Structures from Silence run through Boards of Canada’s Gaussian-blurred hauntology — and yes, the results are as otherworldly as you’d expect.
I have distinct memories circa 1995 of sitting alone in my apartment late at night, the lights off and Eating the Sea on repeat, the album’s melancholy washing over me for hours on end. As melodramatic as that sounds, it proved to be a source of comfort during a particularly difficult time in my life. Though I’m no longer in such a place — thank God — An Extremely Slow Motion Explosion takes me back there, and I can certainly imagine many people, former Soulwhirlingsomewhere fans and new listeners alike, finding a similar sense of comfort in Yttriphie’s own melancholy, should they need it. -Jason Morehead