Bitcrush :: Collapse (n5MD)

The emotive push-pull effect of Collapse is very much intact from start to end as strings and drums are effortlessly pushed to extreme levels—a milestone that sets the bar to a higher elevation.

[Release page] Bitcrush might be juggling with semantics or perhaps intentionally leaving his audience to dismantle the meaning(s) behind the title of his latest body of work for n5MD—Collapse. Submerging himself even further into the bowels of rock rather than shoegaze, post-industrial or fractured electronics, Mike Cadoo’s Bitcrush alias has taken many transformations and traveled several hundreds of miles from Enarc (Component, 2004), even though “Saturday’s Ghost” hinted at what was yet to come. Landing ever so briskly on post-rock and ethereal rhythms, Collapse crushes electronic bits to mere dust particles as they mutate into lively instrumentation with a powerful ethos that defies the aforementioned genre leanings.

“For A Void” delivers a literal breakdown through widened corridors of loss and contentment—often at the same time. “All At Once It Was Erased” flows in the most serene of song structures—lyrics afloat and shivering—an emotive loop fuels the drums and guitars on this epic window of time. “To Collapse Into” and its distant cousin “To Collapse Out Of” are unparalleled in artistic achievement. The former, perhaps the densest of the five compositions, is full-bodied rock with an undercurrent of flowing molten-lava—a soundtrack haven for solemn, quiet nights in the middle of nowhere. “To Collapse Out Of” is a translucent opus of fuzzy memories begging the question if humanity really has lost its way—loosely strewn atmospherics are offset by slow-moving percussion, melodies and a sense of decay. “The Weight (Of A Future Mutation)” is just as compacted as “To Collapse Into,” delving into grainy ambient terrain, heavily layered guitar distortion, delay and drone. With all of that aside, the emotive push-pull effect of Collapse is very much intact from start to end as strings and drums are effortlessly pushed to extreme levels.

As a summary of where Bitcrush has been—the shadows of which are still ever-present on Collapse—his musical trajectory may still be just a glimpse of where it’ll head next. And although it doesn’t really matter if Bitcrush will dive further into emotionally drenched rock with tranquilized electrical buzzing, the current status of this transition is sublime, surreal and emblematic of a logical evolution which seems to come naturally. Collapse is a milestone that sets the bar to a higher elevation.

Collapse is available on n5MD. [Release page]