Broken percussive glitch slivers and a whirlwind of DSP-driven madness abound yet it all seems to coalesce succinctly into eight elongated, and number sequenced tracks. Highly recommended playback alongside Autechre’s recent NTS Sessions, Ignatius’ Vitrine Mentions, and Richard Devine’s forthcoming Sort\Lave.
Well, here’s the album every IDM fan didn’t know they were highly anticipating. The collaboration between Netherlands-based exm and UK-based Mitoma on FF0000 is the perfect assemblage of erratic machines given a heartbeat. Earlier this year saw the birth of their efforts on the excellent I/0 DISC EP (Kaer’Uiks) described as an “ebb and flow with exquisite jagged thuds.” Sure, there are extended sporadic patterns colliding with each other all the way through, however, it’s the delicate background noises that make this album so fluid and digestible. Broken percussive glitch slivers and a whirlwind of DSP-driven madness abound yet it all seems to coalesce succinctly into eight elongated, and number sequenced tracks.
As an avid fan of both musicians for several years, Mitoma carves mechanical slabs as exm fine-tunes brittle melodic strands woven throughout. This is evidenced on “FF0005” where dislocated drums and wandering ambient veils magically stitch the 713-seconds together. And this is really the crux of the entire package—its mutant audio collage and rugged rhythms is an otherworldly traverse across a distant star. “FF0006” does this via minimal clicks’n cuts swarming around a brooding drone. There are textured beat patches (“FF0003”) and heavy low-end flurries (“FF0007”) that systematically transport large sonic data chunks.
Autechre echoes can easily be found on FF0000 and modular machines likely smashed together, but what we have here are two musicians doing what they do best. Conversely exm and Mitoma each deliver a uniform human element to the world of very complex electronic music. Highly recommended playback alongside Autechre’s recent NTS Sessions, Ignatius’ Vitrine Mentions, and Richard Devine’s forthcoming Sort\Lave. Bright colored and well-executed graphics by Daniel Glaser.
FF0000 is available on Touched Music.
