2024 Repress
Peak Oil welcome a new addition to the family with the release of the debut LP from Chicago's Purelink. With just a handful of cassettes and 12s spread across the past year or two, the trio have pretty much emerged fully formed and in Peak Oil have found an ideal home for their well honed and controlled style of minimal electronics. Like with much of the label's key output, there's an obvious debt to European electronic music of late 20th century, Kompakt of course, but perhaps more honed in on the dubby, blissed out axis of Chain Reaction & Mille Plateaux. Hardly a revelatory insight i'll admit, obvious reference points it wouldn't take long for too many listeners to arrive at (forgive me - remember i'm providing these words for free), though i'd also argue there's a little hometown heritage being channeled here, too, stressing some affinity with Kranky's affection for thoughtful composition and textured ambience. Purelink might arrive there by different means (this is very much 'production' as opposed to 'band' made work), but Signs shares a comparable feel with the expansive, spacious arrangements of, say, early Stars of the Lid, Pan American's Quiet City or Labradford's Twenty if they'd ended up on a remix album for A-Musik. Now imagine that! Signs functions as an admirable approximation of such a dream scenario. So dream no more. Only a handful of copies in stock, and like with all Peak Oil, in frustratingly limited supply.
