Dusk [CD]

Portland-based composer / producer / synthesist Daryl Groetsch creates music under the name Pulse Emitter. Channeling his love and mastery of styles ranging from new age to Berlin school kosmische to drone to progressive electronic music, Groetsch crafts emotionally resonant synth pieces teeming with diverse melodic architectures and textural details. Dusk, his third release on Hausu Mountain, joins a nearly two-decade long catalog of Pulse Emitter music that includes releases on labels like Aguirre Records, Constellation Tatsu, and NNA Tapes — along with a slate of self-releases of whispered ambient sketches under his given name and forays into the dungeon synth idiom under the moniker Endless Fog. Dusk shifts the dial of Groetsch’s practice a few notches from the all-consuming drift captured on Swirlings towards a more hybridized strain of Pulse Emitter music that treats rhythm and harmonic complexity with equal importance to pure shimmering synth texture. His work bridges themes like the grandeur of the cosmos and the natural beauty of planet Earth with an exploration of the inner-space within the mind, resulting in excursions that prove just as personal to his experience as they are universal in scope.