Lime68k :: still missing at the club (Self Released)

Bursts of chaos pop up all over the album, taking the shape of anything from an explosion to white noise to shouts, reminders of extreme levels of energy threatening to explode at any moment.

An unwavering aesthetic and a relentless sound

Most of Lime68k’s music takes forms with very few points of reference, even within the radical framework of computer music. This unfamiliarity is obvious in the five minute-long gummy gurgles of Isolat (Miniature Recs, 2024), for example, or in the gas-like atmospheres of Optique\Perspective (Active Listeners Club, 2024), where hyper-fast action happens only in the far distance, behind a shroud of radioactive steam.

still missing at the club hints at the same lack of traditional electronic music tropes even with its title, and at first impact it manifests as an onslaught of beats and noises over thirty minutes and nine tracks (sometimes in seamlessly fluid mix, and sometimes harshly severed one from the next), where each dry percussive sound is thrown into a reverb-laden dark enclosure, to rattle, echo and distort to the point of unrecognizability. The sound palette is hard and clicky, using the frequency spectrum fully and all-at-once, and the pace is implacable, making the first few listens kind of exhausting but in a way that feels as good as a full aural and mental workout, an effort needed to find the groove of the record and start to appreciate it in a more bodily and even emotional way.

Threatening to explode at any moment ::

Humor is (interestingly) present throughout, offering an entry point to the music: “always here” starts with some sort of broken hip hop beat that is soon splattered into shards crashing everywhere in the sound field, peaking back out here and there as if to remind the listener that a structural unit is still present, somewhere. The syncopated “not missing” and “here under” focus on speed oscillations, a rhythmic figure that is used in multiple tracks: in the first, springy but harsh beats speed up to splitter-core territory and grind down to a halt when you least expect it, while at the start and through the latter, heavy atmospheric sounds accelerate and bloom into cybernetic flowers that disappear and reopen so fast they are only perceived as phantoms impressed on the eardrum.

The end of “bound links,” on the other hand, brings the full accumulation and collapse to such an extreme consequence that the joke is suddenly, absolutely serious, the smile is turned into fearful awe. Bursts of chaos pop up all over the album, taking the shape of anything from an explosion to white noise to shouts, reminders of extreme levels of energy threatening to explode at any moment.

still missing at the club shows an artist at the height or her technical prowess who is not afraid to go all in on an unwavering aesthetic and a relentless sound, but is able to do so with a wink and an effortlessness that is not always missing, but definitely not always here in computer music. It is truly a rush of joy and unabashed creativity.

still missing at the club is available on Bandcamp.