Albums
Breaks My Heart Each Time - EP
2014
Release Date: 2014
By Nick Neyland
Reviewed February 18, 2014
On his Apollo Records debut, prolific electronic musician James Leyland Kirby works with a familiar sound palette, but it's more than simple tribute fare—there's a remarkable playfulness and sensitivity to Breaks My Heart Each Time that hints at a possible new direction for Kirby.
The Apollo label, home of brave ventures into ambience since the early 1990s, has housed such a prodigious array of talent that calling it a "subdivision" of parent label R&S almost feels like an insult. It's a sentiment James Leyland Kirby would no doubt agree with, as he sheds various aliases (V/Vm, the Caretaker, and the Stranger among many others) to head out under his own name for his debut EP for the imprint. Kirby often borrows liberally from other sources, so here he aligns those impulses with his surroundings by revisiting sounds that mirror the earlier Apollo releases, giving acres of space to tinny drum machines and soft synth lines that echo into eternity. Anyone familiar with Apollo releases such as Biosphere's or even Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 should find a warm glow of familiarity overcoming them on a cursory glance at .