Tag Archives: Rival Consoles

Switched On – Rival Consoles: Landscape From Memory (Erased Tapes)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

After an extended time out, Ryan Lee West – the man behind Rival Consoles – returns with his ninth album.

Having fallen out of favour with the creative process, West retreated and started composition by way of an audio scrapbook, where past clippings and musical sketches were transformed into fully fledged tracks.

What’s the music like?

There is a fresh, revitalized feel to Rival Consoles on this album. In fact West seems to be falling over an abundance of ideas, but has found the best way to get them all together and make an album that is consistently rewarding, colourful and durable.

There are many highlights, such as Coda and Drum Song, where percussive work and melodic craft work well hand in hand. Yet at times the music is at its most effective without a drum track, as on the start of Nocturne, or the reverie Tape Loop. 2 Forms brings both together intriguingly, starting in an ambient mood but with a sudden burst of acidic, quasi-industrial noise.

Gaivotas, meanwhile, is a great illustration of the colour West brings through from the studio, a rich and dazzling array of textures.

Does it all work?

It does – and the album only gets better and more rewarding with repeated listening.

Is it recommended?

Yes. If you’re a Rival Consoles fan then you will need no persuasion, but if you are new to his music then Landscape From Memory is a great place to start.

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,599 – Thursday 18 July 2025

New music – Rival Consoles: Known Shape (Erased Tapes)

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Rival Consoles, aka Ryan Lee West, will release his ninth studio album, Landscape from Memory on July 4 via Erased Tapes. The label have released a new single, Known Shape, ahead of a pre-album tour across Europe.

Talking about the track, West said “I’ve always been obsessed by controls on machines because they produce beautiful sounds and they have their own rhythms. The drums are made from rotating switches and the synths are set in motion by invisible mechanical rhythms. Machines have a special connection to the human spirit, which is both good and bad but above all restless. There is a constant searching in Known Shape for some kind of answer or emotion.”

Known Shape is a relatively understated piece of music, but compelling too – the beats describing the mechanical processes flit across the stereo picture, while snippets of melody drift in, as though the listener is hearing a piece of music on the other side of a door.

The piece is accompanied by a graphical score West created, shown below:

Published post no.2,514 – Thursday 14 April 2025

New music – Rival Consoles: Gaivotas (Erased Tapes)

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published by Ben Hogwood, with text appropriated from the press release

Rival Consoles returns with genre-blurring new piece Gaivotas, a first taster from his forthcoming ninth studio album, written during an experimental residency in Portugal last year.

“This music feels like one of the most intuitive things I have ever written”, says Ryan Lee West, the man behind the pseudonym. “The momentum that the piece establishes in the first breath pushes forward right until the very end and many of the ideas were created in a first-take moment that were exciting and liberating.”

The powerful accompanying video was directed by Vincent Duluc-David and shot in Kyrgyzstan, where we follow the life of a group of teenagers as one of them mysteriously disappears. You can watch below:

West will be touring as special guest with Kiasmos for select European shows in September, and returns to North America for Slingshot Festival and four headline shows in the Northwest in October.

Published post no.2,304 – 18 September 2024

Switched On – Rival Consoles: Overflow (Erased Tapes)

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rival-consoles-overflow

reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Ryan Lee West’s new album under the pseudonym of Rival Consoles was written for a dance production, Overflow, choreographed by Alexander Whitley. The aim of Whitley’s work was to explore ‘themes of the human and emotional consequences of life surrounded by data’…echoing ‘the concept of social media, advertising, marketing companies and political factions exploiting our data to gain wealth, political advantage and sow division.’

West noted the potential of the combined artform to ‘create an otherworldly space the listener/viewer can escape to and explore’. A big feature of the finished work is a light sculpture created by Children of the Light, with a long LED bar that moves around the stage.

What’s the music like?

Rival Consoles responds to his theme with music of real presence and tension. Right from the off there is an air of foreboding to Monster, with its brooding colours and slightly irregular pitches and rhythms stretched over ten minutes.

I Like ratchets this up still further. Mashing up a short vocal sample, which is effective but also infuriating as the speaker never quite gets to the point. The Cloud Oracle also treats speech intriguingly, with a held note that has talking heads spun around it.

Flow State is a thrilling ride at a high tempo, with crossrhythms generated by the keyboards that are redolent of Steve Reich and which have plenty of opportunity for development over twelve minutes, the percussion hammering more incessantly on the door.

All these examples are an indication of the invention Ryan Lee West gets in response to Whitley’s brief, resulting in music that pushes him further technically and creatively from the previous album Articulation.

Does it all work?

It does. Overflow is a compelling piece of work, a musical equivalent to the striking colours that adorn its cover.

Is it recommended?

Yes. There was a general feeling that Articulation did not quite meet Ryan Lee West’s full potential as Rival Consoles, effective though it was. There can be no such doubt here.

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Switched On – Rival Consoles: Monster (Erased Tapes)

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Rival Consoles – aka Ryan Lee West – is back with a new album, scheduled for release in December. Described as ‘a resonant and explorative soundscape of original music’, it was written for Alexander Whitley’s contemporary dance production Overflow.

The first calling card we have from the record is a substantial one, the ten-minute Monster. West describes Monster as having “a kind of drunken madness to it, highly repetitive to mirror the repetitive nature of how we as humans engage with technology such as social media. It’s sometimes edging towards chaos but yet always returning back to the same starting point, but eventually giving way to exhaustion. I wanted to create a bold opening piece for Overflow.”

It certainly has an ominous presence from the outset, West using micro-adjustments to a single pitch as a slow beat gradually takes hold. The atmosphere is tense, like an approaching encounter in a Ridley Scott film:

Overflow will be released by Erased Tapes on 3 December 2021. For more information click here: