A great release, full of quirky glitchy programming and originality. A real journey from start to finish. Clever, complex and thoughtful, but not dry and academic, this is meant to be listened to and enjoyed, which I’m sure it will be.
[Release page] Kasket has been steadily working away, developing his own sound and building up a pretty good name for himself in the process over the last year or so. This young producer from Brighton (UK) is making finely detailed music that draws on his background as a jazz drummer and the heritage of a musical upbringing. It’s impossible to stick this into a genre, but I suppose there are elements of wonky glitch hop, slightly in the vein of the excellent Alphabets Heaven, who incidentally is also from Brighton. But there are also deep basses, found sound, piano epicness, garage style vocal edits and dreamy synths wrapped up in hints of dubstep, garage and bass.
August Fades is an EP of fairly impressive scope. The first track “Fallen” starts with a percussive intro that is weird and interesting straight off the bat. Live recordings painstakingly edited and sequenced into a lurching stumbling rhythm that drags the listener along with it. Bouncing staccato synth lines patter about while a heavily vocoded vocal line ekes its way along. Never sitting still for too long, the track is full of interesting variation and development; sometimes subtle, sometimes not, always intriguing. Kasket is not a lazy producer, there’s more work gone into this track then a lot of producers put into a whole EP (or album for that matter).
Track two—”Mia”—is a very laid back atmospheric piano based number with a vocal line about a letter, which might be from a film, but might not be. In fact, it has a very emotive and cinematic feel to it, there is a real sense of sadness and reflection going on, coupled with the very large scale of the sounds.
The title track finishes up the release, and it’s maybe the best one. Certainly it’s the most beat driven, and with its faster tempo, this is the one that is maybe the most immediate. Big string arrangements and vocal layering create a sense of grandeur that is very impressive. Of course, the beats are far from straight forward, but by this point, anyone listening will be expecting nothing less. Complex rhythms that morph as they move along, stumbling from one bar to the next are complimented by deep driving bass lines and glitchy edits. The track finally fades out to a string and synth / brass(?) section, evoking the title’s sentiment of August indeed, fading away.
A great release, full of quirky glitchy programming and originality. A real journey from start to finish. Clever, complex and thoughtful, but not dry and academic, this is meant to be listened to and enjoyed, which I’m sure it will be.
August Fades is available on Apollo. [Release page]
