I7HVN Finds Own Voice From Ambient, Neo-Classical & Dancefloor Music On 'The Objective Truth'

Like 'Priests of Decay' earlier this year, which was revealed with an accompanying sculpture, I7HVN's sophomore album 'The Objective Truth' comes with ceramic works. They consist of bones, fractured limbs, and ritual vessels – introduced as "artefacts detached from specific ceremonies or functions, yet still saturated with cultural logic."

It's also a highly apt description for the music on the 10-track release out via the Netherlands label Mirror Zone. There are soft piano flourishes across the album, from the opener 'The Objective Truth' to later entrants like 'Knight of Cups', but it is not a record of soulful neo-classical compositions. The former even combines the kind of placid pads, aqueous synths and found soundscapes into a bed most associated with ambient music, but the tracks carry too much of a narrative to be classified as such. Ghatam-like earthen pots ring out definingly on 'Spiti', but it isn't a work that expounds on ethnomusicological or folk sounds.

While the middle chunk from the four-to-the-floor work 'Pyrrhonism' to 'Transmigration' is filled with relentless rhythms intense enough for psytrance and schranz, they are buried under spatial abstract beds more inviting for discerning listening than the dancefloor.

It's a work borrowing from different musical lexicons to create its own – a feat that I7HVN achieves well. Expecting usual styles and structures will leave you wanting more from an overstretched artistic statement, but getting used to the new world created by I7HVN will find you a remarkably assured artist carving new musical paths for himself. Yet, on top of it, the 2 strongest tracks on the EP are actually the ones falling most within recognisable styles: the whittled-down thumper 'Stag Hunt Mosaic' and the ambient-chord-meets-IDM-drums closer 'Rosin'.

Listen to 'The Objective Truth' for more information and see I7HVN's artist profile for more information.