Time has passed since the magnum opus that was The Expedition: Burke & Wills. Ashley Davies returns to again entertain the music public with a solo offering. Of course, he’s lent his skills to various other projects such as Models, which has kept him suitably occupied. Pulse Transit, however, takes the listener on a different journey and mind space. If the predecessor was all dusty roads, water holes and emaciated bodies, this is a sports car rocketing down the autobahn with carefree abandon.
An instrumental record by a drummer isn’t usually cause for mass celebration or delirious expectation. However, the addition of Andrew Duffield of the aforementioned indomitable Models and the skilful Rosie Westbrook may adequately sway opinion.
Intro Divide One seamlessly gives way to Bring Into Focus with tight drums, future synths and cerebral syncopation flourishes. By the time the harmonium does its thing on Decoke, you get the giddy feeling of having been everywhere at once, and this is only track three. Five more tracks of inspired self-determination follow and explode into unimagined worlds of sound. Pulse Transit has that uninterrupted floating quality of an oil globule in a lava lamp. The upward trajectory even manages to involve some perversity of disparate sounds. And the results are thrilling.
