Those who have been enjoying the rise of Angine de Poitrine and their unconventional setup will find a lot to enjoy on Nowhere Faster. El Ten Eleven have been using a double neck bass guitar, delay pedals and real time looping to create the sound of far more notes than are actually being played for over twenty years, and their sixteenth release is as good as anything in their catalogue.

Tessellating patterns stack and multiply and build into what sounds like a full ensemble, and there are real string embellishments throughout, but there are also so many effects pedals making everything sound orchestral that it becomes difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. The fretless bass itself has a warm and woody quality lending everything a natural richness that processing can’t manufacture. Tim Fogarty’s drums are the other half of the equation, with the hi-hat constantly accenting Kristian Dunn’s meticulous melodic patterns with big crashing breakdowns arriving with the force of an airplane taking off. You can hear Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky and Russian Circles as reference points but the comparison that feels most true is Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds with its sweeping orchestral strings and epic cinematic scope. Patterns are always resolving and moving somewhere new with the music never quite arriving anywhere but always going somewhere with tremendous purpose and conviction. Nowhere Faster is both a paradox and a description of the album’s musical method. Whether the tracks are fast or slow, they’re always moving, cycling and building. The harmonic language is not dissonant or difficult, fitting the logic of classical music and making it accessible despite the complexity. Gloriously cinematic and heartstring-tugging, it’s wonderful that this vast sound is being made by just two people.