Cicada Burnt — Leo

Cicada Burnt — Leo

Cicada Burnt, the newest effort from Manchester producer Leo, is also his first release under the Los Angeles-based electronic label Peak Oil. 

Peak Oil is known for its experimental output, and Leo’s spacious, 34-minute effort fits that throughline perfectly. It is as daunting as it is blissfully digestible— it is deeply and intricately percussive in its wild array of form-setting swells.

Experimental electronic music is inherently impressionistic. The general lack of vocals, and the elaborately strung-together layers and movements of each track, leave room to imprint your own emotional responses. Cicada Burnt goes one step further.

Over its thrumming, bone-shaking bass hits, it creates an expansive atmosphere. While the project closes in and narrows itself over the course of its runtime, it leaves ample room for the listener to float within its confines, suspended between each instrumental strike and each injection of a new sonic motif.

The opening, cavernous drips and drops of “Qwershape” set the tone, seemingly evading any true sense of structure or form as it meanders across its oscillating landscapes. While it dips into harsh noise, it doesn’t commit fully— that would be far too direct a transgression for Cicada Burnt. Instead, it tends to those motifs carefully, as if hugging a guardrail, in service of its grander scope. 

“Jetty” begins with a set of collapsing bass pulses— fuller and more direct than the reversed samplings on “Qwershape”— that are quickly joined by a gently swarming set of snare hits and shakers. 

But the title track, “Cicada Burnt,” is where we get the first full taste of what this project is truly capable of. As industrial sounds refract in a more defined space than the first two tracks provide, not a singular element stays truly stable. The track is constantly shifting— simultaneously refining the structureless nature of the first pairing of songs while pushing the project’s earlier developments forward. It does not come close to ripping the ear drums, but it does lean into an underlying energy that, at the very least, shows the power latent in its soundscape. 

“Descant,” by comparison, offers a more linear narrative. It hums and glistens across a consistent, driving bassline, developing the winding and swelling synths— the shortened progression of which become a theme over the course of the project— into something distinctly more ethereal than “Cicada Burnt”. 

“Spirit Level - Prescript” and the album’s conclusion, “Spirit Level,” is where this all culminates. On both tracks, the plucking sounds of the album’s opening moments return, this time fading in and out of the forefront of the track’s atmosphere. But on “Spirit Level,” this is relayed into a more straightforward, trance-inspired delivery. The song presents the album’s most clearly defined moments— a driving percussive track rolling over a constant, rumbling low-end presence. It feels as though Leo has been toying with the idea of a straightforward dance track for the duration of the album, and on “Prescript” and “Spirit Level,” he finally relents.

Only it’s not in the cathartic way you might expect. Instead, it merely represents a narrowing of the project’s spatial workings. Gone are the caverns and the lofty ceilings of “Qwershape,” but the transition is so gradual and delicate that you wouldn’t be blamed for failing to notice the walls closing in around you.

Across Cicada Burnt, the deep bass, rising from the depths of each track, operates as an entity unto itself. It is not a driving dance force, nor is it even necessarily a foundation that Leo builds his layers upon. It is simply and undeniably there, throbbing in the background as Leo’s refracting images close in upon each other. It is as constant as the Earth’s motion, but is as listless and irrepressible as the rising of the tide.

And as the constraints close in around the ever-present low-end of Cicada Burnt, it is those depths that hold the listener cradled. As the obvious crevices for the listener to insert themselves gradually dissipate, attention is focused upon the project’s pounding heart.

It is not an erasure of space— it is a refocusing, and that is where Cicada Burnt’s mastery truly lies.