The Mayan city of Lakamha, also known as Palenque, is a dreamland of ancient architecture and history, its ruins still inspiring wonder eons after their construction. There are temples and arcane inscriptions and all kinds of cool stuff — in its heyday, it was a site for spirits and gods, esoteric rituals, and explorations into the realms that exist beyond easy understanding. As such, ‘Lakamha’ makes a pretty nifty title for the latest release from Milan-born, London-dwelling Andrea Bonalumi under his Big Hands moniker. Much like 2019’s ‘Baroque Sunburst’ EP, the new work is brimming with dubbed-out mysticism, its heaviness instilled with an aura that approaches spiritual exhilaration.
Lead track ‘1346,’ all quivering synths and skittering rhythms, is a tension-building beauty, one that reaches towards nirvana when, in its final seconds, the percussion drops away and we’re left to float, suspended in the either. ‘Calyx’s Head’ brims with spectral sighs, far-away rumbles and pinging effects, its deliberate pacing adding to its weighty feel. The best of the bunch might be ‘Louis H Theme,’ posited as a tribute to the singular Louie Hardin, the visionary composer perhaps better known as the New York street mystic Moondog: A rubbery sub-bass and ricocheting polyrhythms provide the bed for a windswept, ebbing-and-flowing array of timbres, with the occasional trumpet blast serving as triumphant embellishment. Even with all that going on, ‘Louis H Theme,’ like the EP’s other cuts, exist as unitary things, as much object as they are tunes — all the better get you into that state where time stands still, and sound and groove and vibe is everything.