Melody is all but absent, replaced instead by interwoven mechanical filaments that thread each track together. It’s a lattice of IDM-laced circuitry, clanking and whirring toward coherence, like sentient machines in the act of debugging themselves.
Arcane and quietly disquieting
MTCH (aka Mitch Cramer), a seasoned champion of glitch, has long conjured skewed sonic terrain for a range of forward-thinking electronic outposts. With hkyrbnnpkmdtvovgjr—whatever cryptic code that may be—he continues to refine his command over chaotic frequencies. The album’s shifting landscapes, lurking just beneath each fractured pulse, evoke something arcane and quietly disquieting. But as the layers peel back, there’s a surprising propulsion within the periphery—subtle, but enough to keep the listener anchored.
Melody is all but absent, replaced instead by interwoven mechanical filaments that thread each track together. It’s a lattice of IDM-laced circuitry, clanking and whirring toward coherence, like sentient machines in the act of debugging themselves. Every fragment finds its place when the album is taken as a singular entity. As skewed rhythms breathe in and out, warped tones and filtered drones blur the senses, gradually shaped by dense digital processes. It’s an engineered storm of glitches and synthetic bleepery—deliberate, intricate, and guided by an artist deeply attuned to the anatomy of sound.
Standouts include the rugged tension of tracks like “klhu9kl,” “yrtyrt,” and “pioc,” contrasted by the sporadic, shapeshifting contortions of “vbnvb,” “kjbg,” and “5_bstrckt,” which slither and slide with eerie finesse. Though the album unfolds with a gelatinous, almost liquid continuity—each piece bleeding into the next—it ultimately emerges as a seismic, confounding benchmark in glitch musicality.
hkyrbnnpkmdtvovgjr is available on Evel. [Bandcamp]
