Gordon Tebo - Adaptive Immune, released on Test Tube, comprises of four tracks of ambient genius. Generally ambient albums and EPs have a flavour that runs throughout - you can quite often group artists into ‘illbient’ and ‘generally upbeat or optimistic’, but Tebo transcends my prior tendency to categorise by creating pieces more subtle and diverse.
Blue in you is an incredible piece, the synthetic sounds have a confident and seemingly propitious tone. These are manipulated gently as the piece progresses, as Tebo introduces noise and other random factors.
Process for Progress is more sombre, and I really love the way Tebo uses rhythm here. There’s a satisfying bass drum, that seems to gently oscillate with the noisy recursions in the backdrop. Chord progressions suggesting melody are introduced, and at this point the track starts to remind me of the illustrious Deathprod.
The dissonance introduced in Homeopath Inversion again reminds me of Deathprod, and there’s a lot of subtlety in the background of this track. It’s a shorter piece than the rest, and gently unfolds into a sustained bass note.
All new again is more like Phonophani than Deathprod, I suspect Tebo has had a lot of influence from Rune Grammofon artists. Test Tube calls Gordon Tebo “a man with very special music”, and it is special - perhaps Rune Grammofon should take note!