The holy grail for fans of Steve Soultek's peerless Echospace label which over the years has released some monumental 12's from himself and Deepchord. This limited edition 2 X CD compilation focuses on the magical work of cv313 and comes in a beautifully printed double gatefold CD.

Review:

You see, Echospace [Detroit] presents: Altering Illusions Chapter One: cv313 (or whatever the hell this thing is actually called) is in fact the first chapter in a three part series of Altering Illusions releases, each focusing on a different artist. Two brand new cv313 albums instead of one? Yes, please. Furthermore, it makes for an amazing companion piece to the main Dimensional Space album, the tone and palette substantially different but the content every bit as essential.

There is no better statement of intent than the opening track, “Isis,” as jets of crystalline ice particles are shot through solar winds, which batter the soundstage to the rhythmic thump of a relentless beat. Forthcoming single “Fading Lights [Original]” ups the ante with shuffling rhythms, blunted beats, plumes of steam and tumbling breaks before the album spirals towards the dance-floor with the comparatively brief “Irradiate,” all pin-sharp hi-hats, fretwork and thundering bass.

We enter previously released singles territory at this point, with remastered versions of the both the original and particularly fine reduction of “Seconds To Forever,” “Dimensional” and “Sailing Stars” before the disc ends with “Beyond Starlit Sky [Live]” that reads like a re-pitched, holographic version of “Fading Lights.”

The only material here that doesn’t quite blend in is the odd slice of older single material. “Dimensional” sounds better than ever thanks to an even higher definition remaster, but feels like it belongs to a different era, and the harder stomp of “Sailing Stars” juts out at oblique angles, somehow out of place among its amorphous, vaporous siblings. But this is nitpicking given that this is ostensibly a compilation rather than a dedicated album, even though it mostly feels like the latter, rather than the former.

Perhaps the finest moments on Altering Illusions [Chapter One] cv313, however, are those found on the second disc, an even more seamless and unified experience than the first. It certainly has the power to surprise as it opens with “Longing For Darkness,” a delicate but metallic bowed synth string melody emerging from a mist of swirling vapour, soft static hiss and what sounds like a genuine field recording of a haunted, twilight whistle and howl of wind through deeply saturated, nocturnal environments. It is quite unlike anything cv313 has released before or since, a beautiful hybrid of cv313 textures, dense, whirring drones from Alva Noto’s Xerrox series of ambient albums and Thomas Koner’s panoramic soundscapes.

“Beyond The Clouds” is, for many, one of Hitchell and Modell’s key masterpieces and reason enough to own this compilation, which it closes in a beautifully remastered form, but if any shred of doubt still lingers in your mind, it should be utterly eradicated by one of Hitchell’s crowning achievements: I give you “Standing Still [Reduced].”

Seated regally at the epicenter of the majestic second disc, it is simply one of the ultimate expressions of cv313’s craft, a twenty-two minute pièce de résistance of meticulous and subtle artistry. Once you enter its orbit, and are enveloped in its supple blooms of synth, scything fx, soft flashes of electricity, deep-sea sub-bass throb and bass rumble, ever-so-subtle machine fan whir and the hypnotic, propulsive rhythm of the piece, a higher state of (un)consciousness is inescapable.

It’s followed by yet another album highlight in the newly minted “Magenta,” packed with turbulent whorls of dark beige storm clouds pregnant with rain and ice whipping around the adrenalin-fueled listener submerged in a tumbling life-support capsule full of bubbling fluid that muffles the beat to a in-ear heart pounding. And as already mentioned, the whole experience is beautifically rounded out by “Beyond The Clouds [Reprise]”.

Altering Illusions [Chapter One] cv313 is every bit as strong and essential as the debut cv313 album it supplements and acts as a nexus between cv313 material old and new. It has also just become available as a digital download on the echospace [detroit] Bandcamp site, for those who missed out on or are not interested in the physical CD edition. -Igloo Magazine