Gallery S - The Many Hands Of God

January 23, 2021 - Self-released

New York’s Wyatt D. Stevens continues to hit the mark on both Quality and Quantity, this time from his Gallery S corner. The first release of the new year after a prolific 2020 and almost exactly one year since the first Gallery S release, Stevens explores The Many Hands Of God with three relatively distinct sections of three tracks each. 

The opening three tracks here follow a similar narrative. Quiet, transportive, and ethereal. Sharp drum breaks emerge from the fog, poly rhythms fall over themselves as the beat beings to take shape. Vocal cuts rip through each piece, providing more questions than answers. The tracks are mysterious and brooding, heavy with atmosphere, but emotive elements are held beyond reach. 

‘The Junglist’ thins the shroud of fog, allowing shimmering light beams of sound and emotion to reach the forest floor below. Stevens wields audio effects here with true mastery, delaying and manipulating and stretching the elements in and out of themselves, like a tesseract of light. This energy is redirected in a darker way on ‘Future Parallel.’ Layered drum breaks provide a center for a moody, digital-organ-esque synthline to slither out of the realms of Metroidvania and epic space opera intros. ‘Are You There?’ snaps us back toward the light, with bubbly melodic lines and vocals hiccuping in and around our peripheral. 

‘The Meaning’ follows a more disjointed path, sections of the song butting up against each other, the statement/question “you know what that means ./?” working to thread the sections together. The ending three tracks fall in line with the opening three. Dreamy vocal elements separated by stretched synth chords leave the space feeling drafty, but not sparse. The drum breaks take on an organic feel as they grapple for position. Like before, mysterious and brooding, heavy and transportive. Easy to fall into but hard to shake out of. 🍍