Purelink: Faith

Originally hailing from Chicago, through the hustle and bustle of Purelink’s Brooklyn-base, it has been a great source of inspiration for their much-anticipated sophomore release, Faith.

Consisting of Akeem Asani (a.k.a. Millia), Ben Paulson (a.k.a. Kindtree), and Tommy Paslaski (a.k.a. Concave Reflection), the three-piece has delivered the kind of homespun ambient-based electronica that warms the bones. Their debut LP, Signs, filled with the kind misty dreamscapes that made the mind drift to places immune from conflict and despair, and Faith goes beyond that in subtly expansive ways.

Make no mistake, this isn’t some act plugging in an Ableton next to the coffee machine at some hipster café. Purelink’s compositions are much deeper, abstract and thought-provoking, transcending the shallow, transactional nature said environments often bring.

Faith washes over you like a slowly evolving dopamine rush. Purelink, the ones doing the work instead of the listener, and it starts with their boundless crate digging, finding their revelations in the dustiest corners of record shops all across New York and beyond. This band, influenced by early Pan-American as much as they are CS + Kreme and kindred spirit, Brian Leeds.

In many ways, Faith is all about world building, and Purelink lay the foundations with Looked Me Right in the Eye. Something concocted through a Sunday morning miasma, the trio explore glitch but melt it down into a post-world with a series of undulating dreamscapes that don’t challenge or taint the soul: they sooth it instead.

Featuring Loraine James, Rookie is all sleepy melodies and rolling synths that glide like a ghost through the night skies. Purelink, channelling their inner Mount Kimbie while stretching the post-dubstep ideology to new places.

These beautiful atmospheres continue on Kite Scene, which is like getting swallowed up by sun – that warmth, sinking into the bones, making you feel alive. It’s transcendental, ambient composition for open fields and clear skies, and the remnants drift into Yoke – a collage of cinematic tech-house that sees Purelink breaking the final boundary in a sound world that has now become borderless.

And in it, they reach even further with First Iota. Featuring Angelina Nonaj, her spoken word narrative beautifully juxtaposes Purelink’s electroacoustic offerings that add more new dimensions to their repertoire. So too on closing cut, Circle of Dust. Whirring, dynamic electronica for high altitudes, again, Purelink explore post-dubstep, but this time slow it down to quarter-speed. It’s the kind of moment where everything lines up in your mind: indeed, the pure link.

Meticulously crafted, Faith isn’t ambience built just for big sound systems. Its finest results are garnered through the medium of headphones, which is where you will piece together so many of the crucial layers to this puzzle. Because that’s what Faith is. Not in an intellectual exercise kind of a way, but in terms of untangling the mind knots purely through sound. Reaching that human core, and Purelink manages to get closer to it than most.

Faith is out now via Peak Oil. Purchase from Bandcamp.