Ekster is thrilled to present EKS006, Be Me, by Belgian electronic composer Ssaliva..... This 13-track album pressed on black 12” 180 grams vinyl will be released in an edition of 300 with printed inner sleeves & silk-screened transparent over-sleeves. Download cards included. Mastered by Frederic Alstadt at Ångstrom mastering. Cover photo by François Boulanger & graphics by Victor Robyn. Ssaliva hails from the historic city of Liège in the Francophone, Walloon part of Belgium. Formerly, he has released music under the monikers Cupp Cave and François Boulanger on labels such as Leaving Records (Stones Throw) and Vlek. This album shifts between two poles. The track Guilt might be the prime answer of the first: simple, though intricately beautiful, chopped-off melodies chasing each other through different octaves. Vntitled is the clearest example of the other: soothing ambient synth phrases in an ever-slightly-changing repetition. How sweet it is to be acoustically disoriented. All this accounts for the album’s surprisingly gripping sensitivity, its strong emotional cargo. From the gentle offbeat strokes of the first track to the haunting Who Then Now with its incessant screeching wobbling around, the listener is confronted with joy, solace and sadness. Structurally Be Me could sound like a succession of Indian raggas – albeit very short ones – with the first four tracks associated to the daytime (sunrise, noon, afternoon, late evening) and the remaining tracks with the nighttime (until the break of day). Dream Dive (track 4) is the first to introduce minor chords, classically linked to melancholy, while the electronic sea crashing onto the shore from tracks 2 and 3 is still there, but much calmer now, and ephemeral wind chimes play hide and seek in the ambient sky. After the volta, the next track, Staves, introduces a totally different pallette with the album’s first bass sound, electronic water trickling down somewhere, and what sounds like metal works going on a yet much lower level than the basement you’ve just arrived at.