CRT exposes hundreds of found sounds and erratic noises on this dystopian soundtrack we’ve yet to hear (until now). And what remains at the center of this album is its ability to blend a plethora of leftfield electronic genres into a beat infested and melodically crumpled smorgasbord.
Gritty blips’n bleeps merge w/ extraterrestrial glitch
Cathode Ray Tube (aka Chang/Charles Terhune) continues to finagle a lot of extra time with his sonic machinery and keeps our ears jam packed with its resulting electronic mayhem. Self-described as “an accurate survey of the general landscape of musical life during 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic,” Anyone Can Play finds all manner of glitch, clicks and mechanical soundscapes to coalesce into a unified body of sound with each piece soaring over the eight minute mark.
Tracks like “The Great Indoors” exude form and dysfunction—its crunchy and sporadic beatwork shuffles about in rhythmic bursts only to be obliterated with atmospheric debris. Elsewhere you’ll find post-industrial breaks featured on “Blood Silence” as it takes you on an bumpy trip and eventually cascades through tranquilized ambient ice sheets. The hypnotic machine funk, pounding beats, and melodic notes of “Zonerise” are enough to get you worked up into a mind-bending frenzy as “Wilderness” tones things down just a notch with nostalgic fizz-fuzz and synthesizer data streams. Gritty blips’n bleeps merge with extraterrestrial glitch on “Buried Alive”—a tune that wants to break free from its minimal clicks’n cuts mold yet only manages to scrape the inner edges while remaining in darkened subterranean quarters. “Penduylacrum” inhabits a galaxy thousands of light years away, its broken techno sheen and ambient audio warfare is nothing short of encapsulating.
CRT exposes hundreds of found sounds and erratic noises on this dystopian soundtrack we’ve yet to hear (until now). And what remains at the center of this album is its ability to blend a plethora of leftfield electronic genres into a beat infested and melodically crumpled smorgasbord as the prolific sound sculptor sarcastically advises his listeners that “anyone can play“—well, as long as we’re 6ft apart and wearing a mask, of course we can.
Anyone Can Play is available on Condition Human. [Bandcamp]
