X Or Size

(This article’s English version was produced with AI-assisted translation)

“All Avail” dangerously approaches what we could define as a bad trip. Whether this is a strength or a flaw depends on the perspective: perhaps it’s both. The formula is: a sound collage of distorted voices and percussion, enriched with filters, echoes, and acoustic spaces that emerge, blend, and then vanish; this cascade of samples is laid on a soft carpet of dark bass and rumbles, or rather, what’s left of a kick drum, perceivable only in its deep frequencies. The result is a sanctuary of psychedelic mutations, between laments and tribal impulses, all depicted like cave paintings under LSD, in a legacy that, although crudely labelable as ambient-dub, is closer to “Island Diamonds” by Pocahaunted than to the latest cybernetic explorations of Xenia Reaper and Alpo.

The six jams unfold over more than forty minutes, exalting incoherencies and archaic elements. It’s not in the order of things that X Or Size, the project of American Josiah Wolfson (previously a collaborator with Sean McCann in the drone duo The Geese), finds its essence. Rather, it’s in the chaos, the lack of structure, loops, and the surrender to uncontrollable events; the electronic instruments are bent to a shamanic ritual, rather than to a clean and refined sound design. The sense of these hallucinatory journeys reaches its peak in “Ceremonism”, where a whirlwind of vocal samples descends furiously upon percussion and horns, all chopped up, repeated, distorted, and reduced to dimensions that seem accessible only through heavy doses of psychedelics: it’s like Huerco S in a state of depersonalization, a Madteo stripped of his soul.

Disorder is the guiding principle structuring the work, but it’s also a double-edged sword — one that leads to moments of excessive prolixity, only to regain its thread and restore meaning, subtle yet tangible (“Lathe D’Just”).
The album constantly oscillates between disorientation and mystical fervor, between confusion and anarcho-primitivism (“Osso”), and only in the closing title track does it seem to find balance — the end of a hallucinogenic hysteria, where low-res crackles accompany an astral drone, the oneiric glow of a distant star. It may not be the most coherent record of the year, but honestly, who cares?

09/03/2025