With a patient ear, one can extract the carefully crafted exploratory electronic music Qebo unveils—each pulse, tone, click, snap, and crunch is maneuvered with exquisite detail. Produced and performed live in Athens by Alex Retsis, Formulations is a behemoth of a release and sets the stage (once again) for the balance of 2019.
Two tracks spread over 60-minutes, Qebo has released just over a handful of releases since the early 2000’s with labels like Detroit Underground, Low Impedance, and Vibrant Music, and yet maintains a low profile while creating surreal Autechrean landscapes made from glitch particles and DSP slivers on Formulations.
The title track delivers a 42-minute traverse across undulating landscapes—broken beats, dark atmospheres, and tactile rhythms run rampant. Composed of seamless tectonic plates sliding across each other, “Formulations” is an album in and of itself—its sonic trajectory breaching the downtempo barrier, Qebo culls from 1000s of found sounds splicing wires between industrial-IDM slabs to groovy Lexaunculpt-inspired rhythms halfway through (check the 22-minute mark.) Pushing forward, we find a wall of low-end bass rumbling towards its closing chapters as fractured digital bits and bytes bust open causing an abstract electro deformation.
“Cell Wall / Intron” has its own gravitational pull as well—but runs only a third of its siblings duration. Here we find Qebo flowing within a microscopic realm—electroacoustic elements of dust and debris are allowed to expand and contract as obscure organisms inhabit its mechanical sound space. Yet strewn throughout there are melodic snapshots buried deep underneath the plethora of extraterrestrial layers.
With a patient ear, one can extract the carefully crafted exploratory electronic music Qebo unveils—each pulse, tone, click, snap, and crunch is maneuvered with exquisite detail. Produced and performed live in Athens by Alex Retsis, Formulations is a behemoth of a release and sets the stage (once again) for the balance of 2019.
Formulations is available on Numb Capsule.
