In rotation for the past several weeks/months, this multi-view reveals the latest sonic landscape from several talented musicians. Plenty of brittle, glitch, abstract, noisy, mechanical and bass-infused sounds with releases/tracks by 214, Broken Note, Dadub, illektrolab, Kompozyt, MacroNoise, and Evel compilation with IKTS, Nike Vomita, Flx, and Secret Kitchen.
214 :: Si View EP (Cultivated Electronics)
214’s debut EP for Cultivated Electronics was bound to happen, his electro releases for Frustrated Funk, CPU, Shipwrec, Lunar Disko, Touchin’ Bass and more recently, Klakson continue to break new terrain and yet the Pacific Northwest artist (and self-proclaimed audio mulcher) manages to remain just below the surface. The darkness persists on Si View, its drenched rhythms built from analog machinery and modular sequences that are warm to the touch while its blips and bleeps swirl in the background. “Linoleum or Cardboard” manifests a darker bass beat drones and tones for late night consumption. “Earthworms” is a mind boggling beauty—not unlike Phoenecia’s “Odd Job – Rhythm Box Version”—the tightened breaks and ultra heavy bass carries this track forward and is meant for larger bass bins as the break midway eventually explodes into a rhythmic behemoth. “Nocturnal Hikes” and “It Never Really Ends” churn out classic robotic beats and Kraftwerk styled electronics meant for extraterrestrial travel—darker still, 214 fiddles with the knobs with just the right amount of precision for a four pack heavyweight EP that doesn’t let up and comes highly recommended.
Broken Note :: Exit The Void (Self Released+)
A surreal and robust return to form for Broken Note, back in November 2019 he unleashed this beast of an album titled Exit The Void harking back to good old times of bass, grit, and rugged rhythms. Here we see the talented musician push ahead with corrosive electronics, experimental noise, and continuing to bust open all forms of bass and distortion galore. Each track a massive foray into abstraction and creativity, some pieces are full-throttle behemoths (ie. “Iron Sky,” “Machine Dreams,” “Cold Sweat,” and “Parabolic Hox”) with enough contained power to launch straight into the troposphere. Other tracks tend to break down into microscopic loops and effects tempered only slightly by the influx of percussive explosions and eerie drones (ie. “Pressure Chamber,” “The Nothing,” “Augmented,” “End Game,” and “Cold Sweat.”) Broken Note manages to encapsulate heavyweight branches of exploratory bass and simmering electronic deconstruction and along the way expands the genre just far enough to stand out from the crowd. Once again revealing the extreme edges of sonic warfare, there’s enough fuel in this album to exit the void and leave a lasting impression.
Dadub :: A Sun Called Moon EP (Ohm Resistance)
The dynamic duo from Italy/Germany comprised of Daniele Antezza and Marco Donnarumma continue to muster the finest in rugged and turbulent dystopian dub themes on their latest EP, A Sun Called Moon—this time for the dependable Ohm Resistance label. Ripping through broken rhythms, each piece is an avalanche of sonic contusions. The pummeling low end meshed with aggressive atmospheres flows with a vengeance—and yet even with the hard-edged force on these four tracks, there’s a symbiosis between well-oiled machine music and an industrial landscape. On “The Time You Killed” Dadub manages to unleash a claustrophobic electronic assemblage of noise, grit, and tangled bass that is both cavernous and eclipsing at the same time—its use of eerie motifs struggle to contain themselves in some kind of lost world. On “Past Times Present Ruins” a rhythmic jolt is unleashed in much the same way—instead of scraping through the mud, here we find darker notes dangling in a maze of punching drums. And this focus of darker energies is really at the core of A Sun Called Moon‘s seismic activity. “It Was Too Soon” manages to survey the remains of what’s left of Planet Earth with its chugging beats and hypnotic mood as raw echoes ricochet from outer space. The whole package is an amalgam of tamed fury coming together in one behemoth of a collection that should not be missed.
illektrolab :: Paranoid Android EP (brokntoys)
Four tracks of hard punching robotic electro with acidic twitches and classic rave-era bits’n pieces are spread throughout Paranoid Android. illektrolab’s first appearance on the ever-reliable brokntoys imprint—the title track of relentless low end and minuscule glitch’n acid fragments creates a darkened and definitive trajectory. Elsewhere you’ll find tracks like “Robots Need Love Too” dip into 90’s nostalgic breaks and ultra wide wobbling echoes that bass bins should be tested with. With Paranoid Android having made our Best of 2019 list, its release in December 2019 doesn’t mean any inertia has been lost. In fact, several months later and these four sharp dark-electro cuts continue to erupt and unfold without showing signs of wear.
Kompozyt :: Deeper Forest EP (Trees Will Remain)
Minimal clicks’n cuts converge with clinical techno spheres on the Deeper Forest extended player. “Yellow Humming Mosquito” offers a wide open canvass of bubbling Berlin dub, its core submerged in subdued and shuffling tones while “Sentient Soul” evaporates into mechanical electro environments. The Poland-based artist crafts unique sound sculptures that are at once minimal and eventually dissolve into hard-hitting broken bass manifestos like the highlight track “Roots and Shrubs” with its growling undercurrent. Deeper Forest manages to dip into trance like states when tracks like “Astral Waves” and “Chrome Walls” reveal their technoid precision with bass beats and inherent groove flowing like like a cascading river. In all, the brother-duo Kompozyt delivers a formidable EP of crystallized electronic music that is moving and quite fluid.
MacroNoise :: EP1 (XION)
Here we see (Prague based Slovak aka Tomas Sebesta) MacroNoise crafting further intricate sounds with EP1, a swirling activity of fuzzy electrical debris and delicate synthesizer noodling. “Veil” carefully pushes its pitter-patter beats, softened melodies, and organic trajectory through a colorful sonic prism worth repeated listening due to its contagious lo-fi pop sensibilities and shoegaze versus drone-scape. And with only three tracks to share, Macronoise’s ability to launch delicately obscure and unique sounds is seemingly surreal. “Blu Hyll” exhibits a worldly charm, its chugging background clicks, clips, and cuts blend with an instrumental and nostalgic flare—the closing minutes launches into a dizzying array of wind instruments and succinct organic electronics. The middle track “Osmosis II” is another instrumental beauty with its gentle guitar strings and eerie atmospherics, it eases its way through the flutter of everyday as it breaks down midway through. Drifting into ambient clicks and subtle synthesizer bleeps, “Osmosis II” creates an emotional tug and pull on the senses. EP1 is a retreat from the norm, its leftfield exploration and merging of digital versus instrumental is seamless and quite personal—one can only imagine the amount of effort MacroNoise put into these three pieces as it breathes some well-needed life and positivity into our current environment.
V/A :: 5YA | DGTL | TOMO 4 (Evel)
The first in a four pack, five year anniversary editon, Evel are carrying out the ideology of experimentation—dividing this compilation into four digital volumes and finally compiled into one CD with surprise bonus tracks. Quite an achievement, and with their first in the series, it opens with IKTS’ warm and fuzzy modular Ae shuffling on “M Tro”—a subtle and dizzying array of glitch bits, bobbles, and thumping low end gets the proverbial marbles rolling. Nike Vomita gives us a mouthful with “(zsefv3c)_ßor:wind,” a blissful, contagious, and melodic stream of consciousness that strikes a nostalgic chord when artists like Penfold Plum, Karsten Pflum, Infant, and Proem opened our ears to similar (complex) electronic arrangements with an eerie, yet childlike appeal. Nike Vomita also exhibits a flare for brisk jazz elements and abstract electronics while maintaining a unique story-line. “Cytorax” by Flx is an acrobatic workout in and of itself—broken beats blasting from all corners, laser beam flashes bounce off of acid rhythms and a blistering Aphex Twin’esque grooves that hark back to IDM origins. Secret Kitchen’s “LessCool” closes up with a baffling analog electro pulse—its synth-acid line sizzles in the background as bustling breakbeat bass and a low pressure envelope sets the highlight. 5YA | DGTL | TOMO 4 is a fantastic opening that teases the listener for what’s yet to come, happy anniversary Evel!
