Cmd_altz elicits a breakdown and rearrangement of itself, a sense of balanced and punchy bass, beats and distortion as machines elegantly crash into each other.
Cmd_altz elicits a breakdown and rearrangement of itself, a sense of balanced and punchy bass, beats and distortion as machines elegantly crash into each other. Chang Turhune once noted that “Too often one hears a snatch of electronic music and thinks, “This is trying too hard to be Autechre” while not often enough one hears something and thinks “Which Autechre is this?” only to find it isn’t the mighty Booth & Brown but is in fact something else.” Such is the case, again, with Cascade Data’s latest collection of cyber-electronic-funk on Cmd_altz. This Portland, Oregon duo manufacture similar synthesized squelches, yet somehow restrain themselves in the melodic field.
“strata” offers broken bass thuds, meandering acidic melodies and turbulent flickering as “cdFour” describes a slowly evolving metallic communication system—the rolling whip-lash percussion and disjointed low-end drones are impacting brain teasers. On “tremorthing” Cascade Data creates a sizzling aquatic flurry, jittering beatwork and fractured acrobatic glitch from start to end. “wrack” is a noisier industrial slab—its congested percussive jolts and odd patches are entangled in an electric haze.”fuckridge” is a more subdued mechanical abyss. Its robotic language and diffused pitter-patter is a spacious void of ambient streaming beauty. Closing up this half-dozen extended player with the aptly titled “Six,” one gets the sense that Cascade Data like to delve into Subotnick terrain. The shortest audio slice of the lot, “Six” is a synthesized testing ground, its elongated low-end buzz and carefully placed clicks and cuts slither about in a reserved, extraterrestrial blur.
Play Cmd_altz in tandem with Ae’s elseq 1–5 (Warp, 2016) and you’ll be surprised at how graceful this EP really is. Time for Cascade Data to snag a piece of the limelight perhaps? They’ve been at it long enough and merit some recognition in the post-IDM, exp-electronic crunch bunch.
Cmd_altz is available on Buried In Time.
