Ciel and Daniel 58 Announce Parallel Minds' Fourth Label Release 'Syncrete'

Parallel Minds' 4th label release comes via a long-time friend of the label and one of the Toronto's most idiosyncratic artists, Vibrant Matter. A drummer, producer, film composer, DJ, and a veteran of the city's experimental pop scene, Kieran Adams' music has intrigued us at the label for a long time.

From label co-founder Ciel's early days as a local promoter/DJ, she had been inspired by Adams' psychedelic & percussive DJ sets and found a kindred spirit in someone who shared similarly diverse musical interests. After two distinct & spellbinding releases on ACT!’s (fka Egyptrixx) Halocline Trance and beloved experimental label Seance Centre, PM cofounders received a batch of demos from Adams that felt too ideal to pass up.

Encompassing everything from abstract improv performances, sound poetry, dub riddims, voice notes from friends, jazz drum breaks — the tracks were simultaneously confounding while still firmly rooted in club music.

Syncrete began in 2019 as sound experiments made with the artist's newly purchased Moog Matriarch. Chopping breaks, working with field recordings, and utilizing the instrument's delay, gate, filter, Kieran recorded himself doing long jams of synth and percussive textures that were formed into new rhythmic sequences and variations.

Two years later, he went back to those sessions and plucked out his favourite loops and built new tracks around them, which you find here in this collection.

For Kieran, this was an exercise in distillation and shedding, aided by the passing of time. In following this process, he was able to combine many different facets of his interests, and with time, pinpoint the most touching parts of each recording.

There’s this really beautiful and haunting quality when for a moment through the fog of these compressed sounds, you can momentarily pick out a human voice, or a distant echo of a breakbeat, this feeling of a barely discernible shape in the sonic mist is what gives the EP a haunting emotional resonance & distinct musical texture.

Listen here: