A steam bath of reverb, delay, and shimmering dub: Sound Bath by Sheki Cicelsky, aka Coatshek, unfolds like a transcendental session somewhere between bathhouse, club floor, and psychedelic trip. The starting point was a commission for Double Scorpio's legendary, now-defunct SoundBaths series—and Coatshek distilled it into an entire album.
The result is a hypnotic flow of ambient techno, slow-step, and dub textures, which, at 107 BPM, settles like warm water. The opener, "Softest," already makes it clear where the journey is headed: a cautiously tentative beginning, foggy and diffuse, until a muted beat illuminates the room – like the first rays of sunlight on the floor. The piece grows, pulling downward as if underwater, yet simultaneously lifting into the distance. "Slipping" keeps its promise in its name: looped samples slip into one another, meandering like bodies in the semidarkness. A constant pull, carried by relaxed warmth, until a dry outro abruptly empties the room. The tempo picks up with "The Feelings." A voice ghosts through the dub framework, hints of drone elements balancing euphoria and contemplation. Forward motion, the finest celestial music. "Labyrinth" is particularly powerful: tap-dancing beats, sparkling delays, and even a reminiscence of a Miami bassline. It creates the feeling of entering a glittering spiral that simultaneously disorients and euphorias. "Triple Virgo," on the other hand, builds a dense sound collage, driving, dub-drenched, with a psychedelic touch – a clear high point in the album's flow. The final track, "Eternal Lovers," layers rhythmic patterns and emotional surfaces until they glide into one another and finally dissolve into pure sonic texture.
Sound Bath is an album like a sweat bath: you surrender, lose your sense of direction, and let yourself drift. Between dub, ambient, and slow techno, a music emerges that both decelerates and energizes—an uplift in the haze. A mix of physicality and floating: transcendental, erotic, seductive.
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