Mihal Drop Scene. Video by Rubén Patiño

‘Clear’ is a follow up to LXV’s last solo effort, ‘Asylum/Theophany’ (Soft Abuse, 2015), which was an examination and representation of experiencing the realm of phenomena associated with spectral consciousness.

‘A/T’ sought to further qualify if this experience is genuine or the result of a psychosis referred to in the occult as ‘Chapel Perilous’. ‘Clear’ seeks to address the aftermath of such an experience. It resides in a tabula rasa wiped clean by epiphany.

Where ‘A/T’ was a collection of music about amazement, confrontation, and fear of a new reality, ‘Clear’ is a representation of the material world and the new, artificial voices that emerge out of it to recreate this experience of spectral communication. Distant whispers and chants spin into processed virtual light refracting off spatially arranged hypermedia superimposed over the decaying row-homes and warehouses.

The album is also very much about the more desolate aspects of urban life: modern ruins, wide, empty streets in industrial neighborhoods. These muses instill in ‘Clear’ a mournful quality and, at times, a redemptive one. The fractured voices in ‘Clear’ represent the existential churning of the world, a churning which suggests there is a world underneath this imposed reality, just under the surface, wavering in and out of view.

‘Clear’ also comes in the wake of ‘Sirens’ (Umor Rex, 2015), the well-received collaborative LP between LXV and Montreal recording artist Kara-Lis Coverdale and ‘Witness/Recall’ (Monorail Trespassing, 2015) which features solo work from the artist.