Designed to be listened to on headphones, Chad Mossholder finds more ominous micro-glitch nuances hidden behind these eight sonic peripherals.
Explosive in texture and minimalist in style
Designed to be listened to on headphones, Chad Mossholder finds more ominous micro-glitch nuances hidden behind these eight sonic peripherals. The outcome of this experiment, which explores the Elektron Digitone‘s capabilities, extensions, and restrictions, are bizarre and perplexing. The title track’s gloomy soundtrack opens with enigmatic atmospheric noises, microtones, and drones that are simply contagious. Adjacent tracks like “Random Seeds” and “Stolen Voices” contain shape-shifting electronics and ambient soundscapes that expand and contract, seemingly with no end. With this album, Mossholder appears to have found an elevated signature sound; the abundance of eroded clicks and cuts (see “Circular Ruins”) combined with the unsettling glitch intensity of tracks like “Unhandled Exceptions,” which closes the album, propels it to our Best of 2024 list. Revealing an array of intricately layered compositions that are both explosive in texture and minimalist in style, this one is not to be my missed.
Haptic Clouds is available on Schematic. [Bandcamp]
