REVIEW: Baikal - 'Hear Me' EP [maeve]

Baykal is a lake deep in the land of Siberia, known for its vastness and cold, sparse beauty. The lake and Baikal’s new release on Maeve seems to be cut from the same cloth: the two tracker feels sparse, vast and each track develops as slowly as a Tarkovsky film. Even though both tracks share a similar sonic palette and share the EP's minimalistic tendencies, they are quite different in how they work on the listener.

‘Baby you’ uses percussive elements to set the stage for the mind bending vocal samples that permeate the track. Percussion feels at times like a cold freezing rain pummeling the lake with an unrelenting assault; its subterranean bass sounds like muted thunder, and the synth lines would not be out of place in any trance track. With vocal samples being as cold and soulless as the rest of the track’s elements, ‘Baby you’ conjures up a scene of two star-crossed lover robots trying to locate each other in a torrential downpour.

Meanwhile ‘Hear me’ foregoes nearly all percussion in favor of dubby ethereal synth lines that are as haunting as they are shiver inducing, while also managing to be cold and, at the same time, more emotive than the previous track’s emotionally distant sounds. The vocal sample is a cry for help rather than a ping for location of ‘Baby You’ and track's constant syncopation and interruptions to the flow perfectly channel the mood of frustration.