A live act renowned for their free improvised performances, BIOS have markedly changed their approach since the debut release Fluorescent Minerals five years ago. To serve as a reliable basis for improvisation, the duo began to play with prearranged themes. Far from being limiting, on Powers of Ten these foundations become structures that are as full of change as they are playful. A single track can seem like a medley moving through sections of drama // reverie // fun without dwelling too long on either so as not to be at the expense of the whole. Fractured yet coherent, these emotions are professed in utmost seriousness and also half in jest.

Disembodied and denied to be gloom or bliss, love is revealed to be a raw process at full length. This makes for emotionally hypercharged music that is more inevitable than tense. The record unfolds, for all its ruptures and weight, as familiar. It is a music of pathos, because it benefits from the emotional knowledge that already resides in you.

Phases is an eerie, orchestral album of restraint and grief. Built of feedback and loops, it extends from sombre // gentle strings to colossal drones that invite headbanging. It’s as intimate as a church organ breathing and, at times, not one jot less loud.

A phase implies repetition and nothing resolves repetition but change. Repetition doesn’t need your attention because it doesn’t go anywhere. Repetition doesn’t need your attention because it’s still there. Repetition is uninhibited and becomes disturbing only when it ends.