REVIEW: Rival Consoles – 'Landscape from Memory'

Written for DJ Mag [4/7/25]

Occasionally a prolific producer hits a creative snag. Ryan Lee West, AKA Rival Consoles, has released music consistently since the late ’00s, changing tack from IDM and electro to the calmer climes of ambient techno. ‘Landscape from Memory’, his first album since 2022’s ‘Now Is’, hears West tackle writer’s block by resurrecting audio ideas he’d consigned to a scrapbook. The effect is like peering into a diary — amorphous memories traced by time — soundtracked by intimate club scuffle (‘Catherine’, ‘Coda’) and mournful mood boards (‘Tape Loop’, ‘Soft Gradient Beckons’). Harpsichord-style keys, acoustic plucks and machine beat trills on ‘Gaivotas’ show off West’s knack for welding the organic and synthetic, while ‘Known Shape’ sounds like a long-forgotten memory resurfacing, realised sonically by gated trance techniques fusing fragments together. Thank goodness West kept those old snippets of ideas.