Get Lost in Portland Droner Pulse Emitter’s “Europa”

Listen to “Europa,” a track from Pulse Emitter’s recent Crater Lake LP.

February 13, 2014



FADER PREMIERE

Portland synthesist Pulse Emitter, né Daryl Groetsch, has been churning out delicately expanding and contracting drone compositions since he started the project in 2002, parsing out each composition on sheet music first and then summoning them to life via a combination of synth programming and MIDI-sequencing. "Cosmic" is a word that gets tacked onto his music a lot, but pieces like "Europa," a track from his forthcoming Crater Lake LP, boast an underlying melodic deliberateness that makes it hard to peg him for just another '70s German Kosmische revivalist. As Groetsch himself describes it, "'Europa' is inspired by the blueness of the water of Crater Lake in Oregon, which really has to be seen to be believed. It also speculates about the ocean of water believed to be under the icy surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa. The rhythmic pattern is supposed to create the motion of swimming underwater, the sparkly chords represent light through ripples in the surface. It also experiments with 5/4 time and a mid-song key change." Crater Lake is out now via Chicago's Immune Recordings.

Stream: Pulse Emitter, "Europa"

Get Lost in Portland Droner Pulse Emitter’s “Europa”