Where bass, beats and smoldering dark ambient modular activity crunches data into pixelized cinematic warfare, CRT delivers an impacted and multifaceted 9-track explosion.
Pixelized cinematic warfare
Ripping through hundreds of torn, shredded and decomposed electronics, Cathode Ray Tube has plenty of mysterious sound sculptures yet to carve. With his latest on the unrelenting “specialists in subsonic grief-bass programming,” Ohm Resistance have given CRT creative range—the likes of Somatic Responses and Richard Devine rolled into a cohesive rhythmic industrial blur. Where bass, beats and smoldering dark ambient modular activity crunches data into pixelized cinematic warfare, CRT delivers an impacted and multifaceted 9-track explosion.
“Diversion MX” sums it up in a militaristic sonic pendulum for the senses—a technoid vision of fractured electronic beauty to say the least. Elsewhere, CRT recombines dark energy via miniscule bits, bumps, and bobbles on tracks like the sandblasted “Universal Struggle,” while IDM slivers fall into place on “Quarterfield,” a melodic android soundtrack with enough fuel to propel itself to the next galaxy.
Whomever woke the demons that broke down the system, CRT crafts a definitive blueprint that I’m sure we’ll figure out sometime this decade as he continues to unleash alluring and mechanically-charged music for the senses. Perhaps “Overrage,” the closing chapter, is the albums crowning achievement—a blissfully arcane cacophony of low-end sludge, percussion, and wall of sound as chaotically uniform as the sculptures CRT hasn’t completed just yet.
Who woke the demons that broke down the system? is available on Ohm Resistance. [Bandcamp]
