"That this is Szczepanik's first proper release in this area, and that The Chiasmus rewards close, repeated listens so fully, is impressive. I have a sense this is a prologue of sorts, that Szczepanik is committed, at least for now, to diving deep into drone's elemental potency; it seems unlikely his extension of the possibilities of drone, rooted so confidently in its history, is an accident."
"Dazzled, and still grasping for answers. And I suspect, from the almost Borgesian aspect of the title, that’s probably the point. It’s a record that asks unanswerable questions and there is much to be said for that."
"On The Chiasmus, the young Nicholas Szczepanik shows the form I’d expect from one of the genre’s masters. I haven’t heard them all, but surely I can’t have missed too many ambient drone records better than this in 2009."
"Nicholas' debut CD is much more than an impeccably constructed piece of abstract drone music: The Chiasmus undulates between waves of quiet melancholy and overwhelming beauty, with small slices of pointillistic noise. An album where the emotional response is always the central focus rather than pure aesthetic concerns, the nuances of The Chiasmus are only revealed upon multiple listens; by then, the listener is completely tuned into the world it presents."
"And so it should seem only apt that Nicholas Szczepanik, to whom making music has always been connected with an endless series of questions, doubts, queries and concerns, should nonetheless come to regard composition as a process leading to some kind of hidden truth about himself and the world around him. To Szczepanik, sound is a psychological seismograph minutely detecting atmospheric amplitudes and extracting meaning from the black box of emotion."
"This is an album that won’t soon leave your playlist and may just influence the course of things to come."
"The Chiasmus is top fucking notch and basically deserves a spot in everyone's drone collection, especially with it's beautiful 16 page booklet filled with photos from Avery McCarthy."
"This sort of sublimely expansive, drawn out drone music simply resists verbal description."
"Calling the pieces drones does the settings somewhat of a disservice when there is so much more development and activity in play..."
"...There is something different here. It is hard to define and won't just give away. But still you feel it. 9/10"
"I found myself still discovering new relationships between sound layers; can't ask for more."
"Recently, upon first exposure to Nicholas Szczepanik's “The Chiasmus,” I was struck by the mechano-dystopian aura that its third track evoked in me. It brought to mind the modernist alienation of Lang's Metropolis and Lynch's Eraserhead, at once claustrophobic, detached, and oddly attractive. All this in a sixteen minute composition which, though layered with field recordings and a tenebrous, hollow whir, has few defining features. Neither then, nor now, could I listen to Szczepanik's piece and assuredly tell you whether I had heard it before or not."
"Swelling and harmonizing in a chorus of deep neutral contrast, these five drones are guided by Nicholas Szczepanik through a precise hour before this quasi-mirrored logic returns sharply to the inceptive crackle, imprinting the broken round of the cover’s image to the sound itself."
"His beautifully crafted ambient drones are recommended to anyone into drone artists like Eliane Radigue as well as some of the isolationism-era of ambient. 5/5"