Rival Consoles has been concurrently in the foreground and background of electronic music since the late-‘00s; conjuring tense melancholia for Black Mirror soundtracks, playing in front of 10,000 dance fans at Drumsheds, selling out London’s Barbican Hall, and logging an expansive, wandering collection of synth-sculpted albums that explore a myriad of different styles and aesthetics—but always with human emotion as their lodestar. Landscape from Memory, the ninth studio LP from the UK producer and musician born Ryan Lee West, finally blossomed following a frustrating fallow year away from the production desk. For West, having spent the past decade producing and writing in a habitual way, falling out of love with creativity meant a slowing of the clock that makes him tick, a sense of being swallowed whole by some elementary force. Partly stitched together from a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets, Landscape from Memory demanded a degree of openness and vulnerability in its assembly. “There is a kind of strange beauty to it because it involves the past, present and future in a very strong way.” He set to work massaging melodic kernels into full tracks, like the skippy, haunted club shuffle of memory-jogging lead single ‘Catherine’, which is dedicated to his partner. “It’s extremely open, just like a naked melody on drums, so exposed as an idea… I think because she was so excited by it, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I'm excited too, actually, I just didn't realise,” he reflects. Appropriately, the title track became the first piece of music that made West “feel an emotional reaction after a long time of having zero reaction”—closing the record transcendently in a fever dream of euphoric synthwave—although ‘Catherine’ can be understood as the spark that lit the fuse, bristling with energetic joy. “I like music that has a sense of momentum, really pushing forward,” he adds of the ‘Landscape from Memory’ icebreaker. “And it just instantly has that from the first breath. So I kind of like moments like that when they appear.” These climatic productions are characterised by their propulsive quality, and driven by West’s own push to step outside his comfort zone, having found inspiration flowing from new and unfamiliar sources. After his self-built Hackney studio suddenly felt too controlled of an environment, West altered course, mapping out tracks away from his desk. To that end, Landscape from Memory is a travelogue of creativity on the move, a collection of postcards from everywhere, and an album defined by its restlessness. As Rival Consoles, West’s calling card is his ability to channel hope, pain, sadness, and euphoria all at once, twisting the key in the lock of his internal world and telling stories without words. Crucially, Landscape from Memory is as much about zooming in on the details as it is about seeing past the horizon. Like a saturated photograph or an abstract painting daubed with bright splotches, Landscape from Memory is a riot of colour, an album blazing with a sound-shaper’s renewed love for his craft.
