Tag Archives: Ryan Lee West

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