Kibble :: New Smell EP (Bonding Tapes)

A welcomed addition to any downbeat electronic music library.

Bonding Tapes continues to expand (and contract) with their release smorgasbord and the rebirth of cassette tapes. Not to worry though, Bandcamp digital formats are also available and Kibble (aka Sacramento, CA-based Andrew Pycroft, former head of Suicide In Installments imprint and Awkward moniker) offers New Smell, a debut extended player for BT that doesn’t let up. Seemingly composed as separate entities and perhaps better defined as renditions or versions, this EP is a well-crafted package.

The reverberating echoes featured on “New Smell II” contain brooding metallic drones and insect buzzes’n bleeps as it morphs into a fleeting rhythmic high. Elsewhere you can find burning bass and beats rummaging through industrial wastelands on “New Smell III” where disjointed early-era Amon Tobin intonations are reflected via downbeat flourishes. Kibble’s sound is full of bits and pieces, but it’s on “New Smell IV” where a more direct punching sizzle takes shape—warmed-up modulars speak with each other even on such a condensed 56-second track. On “New Smell V,” perhaps the highlight of the lot, acrobatic percussion and bass hypnosis are rolled into simmering and defused rhythms. Quite a tantalizing, and missed gem in the leftfield electronic realm, “New Smell VI” is ravished by low-end sputter clinging to an emotive classical underbelly—its digital signals are processed and tangled through a slow motion wind tunnel.

Recommended and not to be passed up, New Smell is a welcomed addition to any downbeat electronic music library.

New Smell is available on Bonding Tapes.