Monolith Cocktail Blog

Premiere Single
Words: Dominic Valvona
Photo Credit: Miles Hart

Sebastian Reynolds ‘HAL’s Lament’
(Faith & Industry) 13th November 2020

The highly prolific polymath (composer, producer, keyboardist and pianist par excellence, remixer and record label boss) and encouraging meditative Oxford-based artist Sebastian Reynolds is back once more on the Monolith Cocktail with another mind-expanding cerebral trip, ‘HAL’s Lament’. The second single, to be released this Friday, in the run up to next year’s Nihilism is Pointless EP (released in January 2021), is a plaintive augur of a homage to one of Arthur C. Clarke’s and Stanley Kubrick’s most memorable characters, the increasingly scheming A.I. companion HAL from a 2001AD: A Space Odyssey. As I say an augur, Seb’s mysterious cries and cybernetic wallows from a mysterious cosmic depth issue a warning of the dangers of utopian idealization; HAL is the ultimate example of higher intelligence – cunningly, almost, out-humaning the humans on board a spaceship bound to a evolutionary star gate – evolving into a dystopian nightmare. In this case, taking on logical decisions of self-preservation that ultimately leads to the calculated murders of the spaceship’s crew.

Following on from last month’s quivery swelled spatial drama with moments of grinded and sparked dissonance, ‘Diving Board’, Seb composes a suffused mirage of foggy voices and an ominous alarm of slow synthesized metrics that channel his teenage love for sci-fi trip hop acts such as UNKLE, as well as the deep grooves and dense atmospheres of Massive Attack and Burial. I’d add a hint of the Future Sound Of London to that bold list of inspired techno, electronica and breaks’ stars. 

The EP and singles are being released via producer Capitol K’s burgeoning Faith & Industry label, the release platform for Capitol K’s output as well as luminaries such as John Johanna, Champagne Dub, Blue House and Thomas Nation. Nihilism is Pointless follows on from the previous The Universe Remembers EP (also released via Faith & Industry) and the single ‘Heartbeat/My Mother Was The Wind’ (released through Seb’s own label PinDrop). The Monolith Cocktail is happy to premiere.

See also:

Sebastian Reynolds ‘‘Maṇīmekhalā’ (Here…)

‘The Universe Remembers’  (Here…)

‘Diving Board’  (Here)

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Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.