Photay – Onism

Onism is a concept rooted in existential frustration and disappointment. Perhaps Brooklyn-based producer Evan Shornstein chose the word because he sees his genre-spanning, utterly invigorating music as an antidote to the condition. To experience onism is to be overwhelmed by the realisation that you’ll only see a sliver of this world in your lifetime. To listen to Photay, meanwhile, is to be continually taken aback by new sounds and sensations, and to marvel at how artfully Shornstein dissolves them together.

If that description makes Onism sound overstuffed, it’s not. Photay specialises in a subtle kind of maximalism, assimilating elaborate ideas and leftfield instrumentation with a light touch. A track like Eco Friend, for instance, has many moving parts, but each arrives patiently and in single file; hyperactive stabs of electric colour diffuse seamlessly into daytime talkshow saxophone, while the shift to compound time is modest enough to pass beneath the radar entirely.

But it’s the The Everyday Push that best captures the spirit of the record. It begins with monotonous chirping of what could be miscellaneous office technology before a balafon (a kind of west African xylophone) comes bounding over the cubicle wall to shake the whole place up. Like Onism as a whole, it leaves you feeling that your world’s just gotten bigger and a lot more interesting.

Listen to: Screens, Eco Friend