In rotation for the past several days/weeks/months, this multi-view column reveals the latest sonic landscape from several talented musicians. Plenty of brittle, glitch, abstract, noisy, mechanical and bass-infused sounds with releases by Drogtech, Metic, Rorquals and Dead Circuits, Snowbeasts & Solypsis, SubtractiveLAD, and Utility Player.
Drogtech :: Fractured (Sun Sea Sky)
Like a distant friend you’ve not seen for over 20 years, Fractured by Drogtech exudes a symphony of sound, both fractured and swaying in the background, bringing back sweet memories. Opening with “Don’t Look Back,” the reversed loops, ambient electronica heartbeat, and cascading melodics is sincere and exuberant. Drogtech really finds his bearings on the blissful low-end rumbling harmonies of “In Between”—its over arching musical passage of sound and structure meld like no other, the emotive essence flickering lightly in the shadows. Fractured offers nostalgic pulses of light, tracks like “Evaporate” and “Lost Way” segue into dreamlike states where pitter-patter beats and microscopic fissures break through fluttering drones creating new musical spaces for us to reside. At the end of it, Drogtech delivers an album packed with vivid sound sculptures that bend and transition with an organic and textural quality all its own—the closing “Long Way Home” paints an aural canvass of weathered pastel colors and a fleeting memory of swimming at the lake so long ago without a worry in the world. Fractured simply takes us there (and back), ever so carefully letting us loosen up in its fragrant mist of tranquil electronics. [Bandcamp]
Metic :: Matrix Blaster EP (Soft Computing)
Romulo Del Castillo (one half of the mind-altering Phoenecia duo with Joshua Kay) released this EP originally in 1996 as the first release on their Schematic Music Company imprint—a blueprint for what IDM producers would eventually try to catch up to many years later. Soft Computing, a sub-label of Unknown To The Unknown recently reissued this gem for the first time and remastered as a digital release. Not surprisingly decades ahead of itself, these four elongated tracks from the six to nine minute range still pack a punch—the title track a glitch electro beast of rapid-fire blips and bleeps that sputters its beats and rhythmic tone with a colorful blur. “Cyme” and “Phase Inv” deliver twitching analog echoes and emotive melodies pulling them together—perhaps a launching point detailing where Phoenecia would soon go on their signing with Warp for the Randa Roomet EP a year later (considered one of the many releases we now consider classics). The (appropriate) laser blasts and bass thuds on these two tracks alone are just as explosive as they sounded almost 25 years ago. Closing with “Tape Birth,” Metic provides a visceral electronic contour of evolving glitch and broken acrobatic electro that echoes with a darker energy culling elements of both Phoenecia and Soul Oddity into one smorgasbord. Matrix Blaster was (and still very much is) a baffling experimental electronic release that stands the test of time with its impressive juggernaut appeal and continues to be one of the definitive go-to EP’s and a benchmark of the IDM scene. [Bandcamp]
Rorquals and Dead Circuits :: Symbiosis EP (Courier Sound)
What a baffling assortment of music this aptly titled extended player is. Rorquals’ unrelenting stretched guitars and emotive backdrop of beautiful noise on the opening track “The Trail” is as infectious as can be—its looping effects and drenched rhythm of ambient washes is reminiscent of Fennesz and port-royal joining forces. Rorquals continues with “Sudden Light” and “Collision” where echoes of bass sludge and atmosphere meander and coalesce in turbulent guitar lava flows. As we move on to Dead Circuits, “Brain Chamber” evolves, devolves, breaks apart, and eventually explodes into 11 minutes of Gescom-infested bass and distortion—its hypnotized rhythmic sandblast is surreal and engaged start to end. This track alone is a contagious epic for repeated listening that doesn’t let up. Elsewhere you’ll find Dead Circuits experimenting with detuned synths, drifting glitch noises, and eerie effects on “The Breathing Method”—a distortion field that bursts into charcoal fragments of dust and debris. On the closing collaboration, both musicians offer “Malfunction,” a dense foray into modular fizz fuzz acrobatics and atmospheric rubble that is a satisfying closure to these otherworldly sonic slices. [Bandcamp]
Snowbeasts & Solypsis :: Snowbeasts & Solypsis (Component)
Combining sonic forces together for a colossal album, Snowbeasts (aka the “lysergic-cosmic weirdness and invocatory voices” of Elizabeth Virosa and Rob Galbraith) and Solypsis (aka the “speaker shredder” known as James Miller) have released a self titled 10 track album of complex electronic mayhem that somehow blends as a whole. The churning, chugging, and crepuscular beats exhibited on this album (ref. “Modern Gorgon”) run through explosive and relentless industrial swaths of heavy bass and bliss (ref. “Copper Rain Fell.”) Darker rhythmic elements slither through tall grass finding their way into encrusted caves in the middle of nowhere—both alias’ feed off each other, broken melodies and a smattering of other worldly dark beats (ref . “The Economics of Death”) continue to scorch the landscape, scraping hundreds of rocks, mud, and debris with it. Glitch elements, industrial bass, and spooky electronics from another planet, Snowbeasts and Solypsis create, deform, triangulate, and migrate their mysterious sound structures for a powerful album that doesn’t let down. The screeching blips and bleeps hardened by vintage synthesizer manipulation and tempered breakbeats, techno, and noise makes for a confounding album that fans of classic Witchman, and Scorn will devour. If “Resurgence” alone doesn’t take you down Dead Can Dance memory lane, we are not sure what else will. The artwork for this split release is perhaps the best we’ve seen all year, hands down. [Bandcamp]
SubtractiveLAD :: Mercy (Self Released)
Stephen Hummel continues to amass a varied catalog of releases that open into otherworldly ambient realms, this time around Mercy offers a more robust and lively view of the artists’ sonic abilities. On the soothing buzz of “A Home for the Restless,” SubtractiveLAD explores shades of light and darkness—a myriad of calming ambient sounds coalesce and eventually stretch into a symphony for the ears to absorb. Elsewhere we can find abstract bits and bytes of modular deconstruction on tracks like “A Path to Understanding” where instruments are tangled together in some kind of experimental mish mash out of left field. “A Time for Mercy” takes us back into the far recesses of the mind—a Subotnick like slice of analog machinery that bends and contorts as it molds into a nostalgic sonic blur. An album highlighting the artists varied skill set also manages to oscillate far from the confines of drones and tones—Mercy breaks apart into hundreds of found sounds, sometimes fleeting and tranquil, sometimes bustling and erratically serene (reference the glitchy tentacles of the closing piece “A Moment for Life”). SubtractiveLAD ventures further into the murky depths of his machines to create another dimension of sound sorcery. [Bandcamp]
Utility Player :: Chroma Phase (Rednetic)
Utility Player (aka Simon Thomas) returns with Chroma Phase where playful synth-pop hues tread ever so carefully alongside Italo disco extracts. And rather than let genre tags take center stage, it’s perhaps more important to note that the whole album provides an upbeat electronic voyage through sincere melodies, stretched rhythmic tones, and positive layers of synthesized modulations. Have a listen to the sun soaked “Atomic Party” or the magnetic bounce of the title track, the techno shards of “Glaretram,” and the funky breaks of “Viscopose” with its subtle pitch shifts. Taking us back into a nostalgic time capsule, Chroma Phase exudes character and its range of motion (and emotion) is buried in clean cut production values with an emphasis on sweetened dynamics. The symphony of low-end grooves running parallel with energetic melodies allows each piece to glow in a light all their own. Cascading waves of harmony dance about in the wind, allowing Chroma Phase to take us decades into the past where musicians like Morton Subotnick, Gary Numan, and Giorgio Moroder elevated the beauty of their machines—Utility Player carves a similar pathway, albeit with a newly polished electronic sheen. [Bandcamp]
