Cahl Sel: Traces

"Anyone stumbling across the utopian cerulean vistas of Cahl Sel's earlier this year could have been forgiven for wondering if the record was a forgotten gem from three decades past, rather than a brand-new production from a young upstart. For one thing, the label that put it out, Reflective, is itself a vestige of leftfield electronic music's golden age, having lain largely dormant since 1997. Reflective was resurrected in 2022 to release Cahl Sel's debut EP, Every Moment; in its prime, the imprint had been responsible for a wealth of mid-'90s classics-records from bright-eyed mischief-makers like label founder Spacetime Continuum and IDM pioneer µ-Ziq, recording as Kid Spatula, who lured curious ravers in stranger, squirrelier directions."

"Cahl Sel's debut album, Traces, sounds even more like a lost ambient-techno classic. The drums move like precision-engineered machinery: sturdy yet understated kick drums, die-cutting snares, diamantine hi-hats spinning in tricky clockwork patterns. Arpeggios twirl in elegant arcs against airy pads that glow like a tropical sunrise. Tracing the path of Cahl Sel's serpentine synthesizer melodies, it's easy to imagine hothouse flowers filmed in stop motion: green shoots whipping upward, uncurling in midair, and slowly exploding into star-shaped blossoms tinged with cadmium and azure."

Cahl Sel employs a hardware-focused setup to produce music that echoes mid-1990s leftfield electronic sounds. Reflective Records, dormant since 1997, was revived to release the early EPs and aligns the work with classic IDM and ambient-techno lineage. Traces pairs machine-like drum programming — understated kicks, die-cut snares and diamantine hi-hats — with arpeggiated melodies and glowing pads that evoke pastoral, tropical imagery. The album balances propulsive, jittery techno and more atmospheric, new-age-inflected passages, with tracks shifting from energetic opener moments to drumless, otherworldly sketches that foreground shimmering synthesizer textures.

Read at Pitchfork