Helios – Veriditas (Black Vinyl)

Includes Free Digital Download Code.

Standard Edition Black Vinyl.

On respective edges of America - Oregon and Maine - Keith Kenniff records quiet music at night. "When things are calmer," he says. "My mind is less distracted when I know that everything is dark outside." For over a decade, such has been the mode - nocturnal, unrushed, using the same mini-cassette recorder, "a lovely little imperfect way to treat sounds" - for one of the country's most understated composers. Kenniff has housed dozens of ambient releases under the name Helios since 2004, alongside post-classical output as Goldmund, shoegaze pop with his wife Hollie as Mint Julep, and commissions for film and television. It is a reliably transportive body of work that's earned Kenniff a cult following, and a genuine modesty that's kept him on the fringes, right where he prefers, in the dark. Veriditas, the sixth Helios fulllength, introduces unusual shapes and landscapes to the Helios catalog. Whereas past songs have followed traditional structures - discernable b ell curves with beginnings, arcs, and ends - the focus here is texture and harmony. "I wanted to explore emotionality within something more static." Synth-tones radiate and hum as vignettes, often crisp and cloudless, other times smeared to a queasy Boards of Canada-like unease.