artist: Polysick
title: Daydream
released: 2013
artwork: Anna Papanastasiou & Jeroen Wille

tracklist:
A1. Twilight Part 1 (2:07)
A2. Twilight Part 2 (6:44)
A3. Citylights (6:06)
A4. Haze (1:45)
B1. Blazer (2:55)
B2. Daydream (7:03)
B3. Untitled (2:14)
B4. Unreal City (5:36)

Release Date: 4 March 2013
Limited edition of 500 copies

These last few years Rome based producer Egisto Sopor has been turning heads with a steady stream of most excellent releases. A cdr on Legowelt’s Strange Life Records, a tape on 100 % Silk, a double LP on Planet Mu and an evergrowing series of jams that are put on soundcloud or on his youtube channel. All of which offer atmospheric acid tinged techno laced with idiosyncratic touches. He has thus developed quite a cult following among lovers of lo fi electronic music who eagerly await his next grainy video, that feel like lost transmissions from an early nineties MTV broadcast. Polysick doesn’t get out much and keeps a low profile which adds to his rather enigmatic standing.
With his new LP Daydream, Egisto has created the perfect soundtrack to a midnight trip through darkened cityscapes. Starting out like a confused jam session it slowly takes off and twists into uncanny shapes conjuring up images of a futuristic nightlife that plays out under neon lights, with a feeling of dread constantly lurking in the shadows. This is techno that tells a tale; a storyboard that comes pushing through in muffled flashes. A chase scene through deserted back alleys, executed while hunter and prey are both in a half-awake state, stuck in an infinite loop. And when the ambient synth twirls unravel and a 4/4 pulse kicks in and tears through the dreamy state of conciousness, it never signals a reassuring release of tension. You might dance to it, but not without anxiously looking over your shoulder.

Some technical information about this release can be found here

REVIEWS

Tiny Mix Tapes
In-depth-review of Daydream HERE
Quote: "The title speaks to the intent of the album, an acid flashback to the rave era; Polysick immerses the listener in the memory of it. The experiences of the self are not singular, but multifarious, with several different components. UnlikeDigital Native, Daydream has a much less sterile quality about it. It is quite warbly, stressing the human, subjective center, making Daydream less of a commentary like Digital Native. Polysick has spoken many times about the notion of a journey or inhabiting a place. His use of spacious qualities allows him room to expand as much spatially as he does temporally (the latter speaking to his own expressive growth). The internet age, an inescapable influence on Digital Native, appears to be a priori, hypertextual for Daydream; this album is a direct result of the information age. Through the internet, one can quite literally return to a time as this album does. The contextual evidence is more in the head space than it was in the signifier of retro-futurism. Where Digital Native seemed like a meditation on its singular qualities, Daydream is the experiential whole. Speaking to this idea, Daydream seems to be consistent with Digital Native instrumentally, only angled more towards a “warehouse” orientation to, once again, evoke the origins of the sounds with the use of the 909/303." By Tiny Mix Tapes, March 2013

Fact Magazine
Egisto Sopor has been a firm fixture on the dance-not-dance underground for a few years now. The Rome-based producer known as Polysick first emerged in 2010 with an album for Legowelt’s Strange Life imprint. That was followed by a split EP with LA’s SFV Acid – a canny pairing, as both share a taste for woozy bedroom synth music grounded in acid house. Sopor’s remit, though, has since revealed itself to be broader, and he has a pleasing tendency to lapse into verdant, weightless synthscapes. The producer’s early career came to a head last year with an album for Planet Mu, Digital Native, that brought together many of his concerns up that point. The record didn’t make much of a splash, which is a crying shame: its brand of humid pan-global exotica – like a hypnagogic updating of John Hassell’s Fourth World concept – was singular and charming, and it was certainly one of the stronger album-length statements to come from that world.
The comparatively slight Daydream - eight tracks totaling just over half an hour – is its follow-up, released through Belgian label AudioMER. Many of Sopor’s sonic signatures are, thankfully, intact. Those gorgeous spongy, soured synth tones make an appearance in  the seductive one-two of ‘Haze’ and ‘Blazer’. They also feature in the untitled seventh track, though there, combined with the plangent melody turning pirouettes in the foreground, they take on an icy quality reminiscent of early Autechre. Elsewhere, Sopor’s dancier tendencies are brought to the fore – indeed, it’s this side of the producer’s personality that comes to define the album. At points a familiar steamy tropicalia is invoked, particularly in the excellent ‘Twilight Part 2’, whose smudged atmospherics partly conceal an acid line that flickers out of the murk like the tail of some exotic lizard. But in all cases Daydream is darker and more forbidding than its predecessor, and tends to evoke a grander sense of space. ‘Citylights’ is gaseous, unsettled; the title track is far sunnier but carries a hint of paranoia, aided by its deadpan mnml-esque monologue.
Much of this album explores house music in a fairly straightforward sense – measured, slow-build structures rather than the crystalline sketches Sopor has often worked with – and the execution is excellent. But a question remains – is the producer really playing to his strengths here? Closer ‘Unreal City’ gets to the crux of the issue. It’s a cityscape in the Bladerunner mold, dank, desolate but shot through with an eerie beauty. The techniques deployed are all familiar from Sopor’s past work – the animated synth doodles, the middle-distance fog of delay – but in mood it’s situated somewhere rather different. Daydream feels transitional, clearly intent on making a break with the past but not quite weighty enough to set out its stall completely. Still, Sopor is evidently moving on, and that’s to his credit. – Fact Magazine, March 2013

Fact Magazine
Recent interview with Polysick for FACT Magazine, where the audioMER. record is mentioned: Fact Magazine, March 2013

Boomkat
Polysick follows the hyperdelic dream techno of 'Digital Native' for Planet Mu with the glinting wormhole groove refractions of 'Daydream' for Belgium's audioMER. It's a engrossing sci-fi fantasy episode of sleek 4/4 house and techno grooves immersed in vivid yet slightly surreal synthscapes. From the two part 'Twilight' there's a strange sense of unease that makes this album quite compelling, percolating through the Tin Man-like acid squirms and cyber-noir synth flutters of 'Citylights' to the red-light district stalk mode of 'Daydream', but the bets parts for us are those trippy wormholes and interzone shortcuts such as 'Haze' or the warmly evocative 'Untitled' and his vivid vision of 'Unreal City'. – Boomkat, March 2013

Rif Raf
Met 'Daydream', het derde album van Polysick, tekent het Gentse audioMER.-label voor een behoorlijk unieke flashback richting begin jaren negentig van de vorige eeuw – tegelijk één van de beruchste episodes uit de moderne uitgaansgeschiedenis. De 'Daydream'-lp – inclusief het monochrome hoesontwerp – van het Italiaanse Polysick is een archeologische vondst van jewelste, rechtstreeks en quasi-intact overgeflitst uit een ander elektronisch tijdperk. Geen digitale of artificieel opgepompte effecten voor Polysick, maar eerlijke, eenvoudige en analoge keyboardjams. Dat lijkt wat anachronistisch van insteek, maar de man gaat op hoogst originele en psychdedelische wijze aan de slag met vervlogen tijden, toen acid, ambient en donkere Detroit-techno de plak zwaaiden in de internationale clubcharts. Creatief-nostalgisch verantwoorde trip. (fp) – RifRaf 243, Maart 2013

A Closer Listen
Digital Native, Polysick‘s album on Planet Mu last year was, for me, one of 2012′s sleeper hits, a record I found myself coming back to from time to time, or being pleasantly surprised when a track bubbled up to the top on shuffle mode. So, with that album still fresh on the player, here comes Daydream with what seems like almost indecent haste – although it’s probably nine months on that, frankly, is peanuts in comparison with some more prolific friends of the site. The Rephlex-y analogue synth burbles are well to the fore here, along with the sounds that seem to echo library music of the 70s and the occasional techno beat to underpin proceedings, basically all the influences presented on his mixtapes whipped into a cohesive whole. It’s no secret that Polysick is a man with retro leanings – the cover of Digital Native was presented with the vinyl scuff marks printed on – but Daydream is no backward-looking museum piece and the tracks have enough of the ‘new’ about them to not feel like an exercise solely in nostalgia. The bangs and clatters of the opening track and the fractured arrangement of “Unreal City” are enough to attest to the contemporary nature of the album; the tracks between are more cohesive and overall the album works very well as a whole piece. Is it as good as Digital Native? Ask me again in six months. – A Closer Listen, March 2013

Ele King (JP)
Ele King, February 2013

De Subjectivisten (NL)
Ondanks releases op onder andere Planet Mu en 100% Silk is dit album op het Belgische audioMER mijn eerste kennismaking met deze producer uit Rome. En geen slechte moet ik zeggen: Polysick weet op een creatieve manier het redelijk uitgemolken genre “retro elektronica” toch een beetje spannend te maken. Met donkere ambient, analoge synths en een dikke knipoog naar de acid cultuur van de begin jaren ’90 liggen de vergelijkingen al na het tweede nummer op het puntje van de tong, maar zeker wanneer hij zonder echte beats Daydream naar sci-fi soundtrack hoogten probeert te tillen, straalt de kwaliteit ervan af. – Subjectivisten, March 2013