Daniel Avery
Genre: Techno
Origin: United Kingdom
“The word escape is wrong, I haven’t been trying to escape”
Ultra Truth – the fifth album by Daniel Avery – is ablaze.
The burning fire is there in the distortion that radiates bright and flickers across the tracks like flames, shooting sparks in every direction. It’s there as every celestial melody decays, rendered down to molten sound, leaving almost nothing under wave upon wave of white noise, black noise, red and amber noise. And it’s there in the heat created by the constant motion of rhythms wrenched out of overheated machines; skittering drum tracks programmed in restless sequences that become more hypnotic as they unfold.
Since 2013’s Drone Logic, Avery has released four critically lauded solo albums and one collaborative LP – Illusion Of Time – with Alessandro Cortini, Italian composer and member of Nine Inch Nails, a band with whom Avery toured across America in 2018.
“Ultra Truth finds me in a different place to where I’ve been before. My previous albums have all focused on the idea of music being an escape or a distraction from the world but that’s not the case this time. For me this album is about looking directly into the darkness, not running away from it. There’s a way through these times but it involves keeping the important people in your life close to you and navigating the noise together. This is an intentionally heavy and dense album, the hooks often hidden in dusty corners. I’m no longer dealing in a misty-eyed euphoria. Ultra Truth is a distorted fever dream of a record: riled, determined and alive.”
The record was created in Avery’s Thames side studio with collaborative help from a host of friends: the production touch of Ghost Culture and Manni Dee, the vocals of HAAi, Jonnine Standish (HTRK), AK Paul and the voices of Marie Davidson, Kelly Lee Owens, Sherelle and James Massiah. Each adds their own unique emotional glow to the record through poetry, pensive thoughts and soaring melodies.
“I’m working with an entirely different world of sound on this record. Every single influence from the last decade spent on the road plays a part. Things that have been in the back of my mind forever, warped, distorted and pushed to a new place.”
Ultra Truth is just that. It’s the ultimate musical truth of one of the country’s most innovative, boundary-pushing electronic producers. And the truth is, this is a record to give you a burning sense of hope.
