It’s a dizzying array of found sounds glued together by a talented sonic sculptor that results in an upbeat, punctuated, and creative album with teeth.
Tangled beats and melodic bubbles burst around the edges
AZ-Rotator (aka Uge Ortiz) expands his sonic research, delivering obscure yet delicate blips’n bleeps surrounded by sequenced effects, alluring braindance, and broken Casio elements for Exploring Standards.
As tangled beats and melodic bubbles burst around the edges, tracks like the short-running “Slow Motion” offer just enough fuel to push its counterparts to the next level. Where side-swiped rhythms and harmonic strands drift on tracks like “Alternaid,” AZ-Rotator merges broken vocal bytes (ref. “Strangel Aminia”) with looping glitch echoes from outer space as noted on “Insomnia.” It’s a dizzying array of found sounds glued together by a talented sonic sculptor that results in an upbeat, punctuated, and creative album with teeth.
The tiniest electrical morsels are carefully wedged between tethered beats and technoid backdrops (ref. “Elebat”)—but just when you might consider Exploring Standards an album of conceptual leanings and abstract flutter, tracks like “Longitudinal” provide just enough density and rhythmic noodling to keep us on our feet. While its interludes act as subtle links to another dimension, the opening “Momento Undo” carefully shares its hypnotic echoes and hypnotic pitter-patter notes.
Exploring Standards is available on Evel. [Bandcamp]
