Perhaps some of the heaviest soundscapes we’ve heard in 2022, Stormfield & Mitoma pack more than the usual punch on Theia EP consisting of 4 original tracks and 5 remixes.
Engulfing, relentless, and surreal
Perhaps some of the heaviest soundscapes we’ve heard in 2022, Stormfield & Mitoma pack more than the usual punch on Theia EP consisting of 4 original tracks and 5 remixes. Both musicians craft unique compositions on their own—together, they take it to the upper atmosphere.
The title track is a murky foray through shuffling beat patterns, dystopian sound waves, and encapsulates an overall blistered rhythm that engulfs itself. Industrial wastelands taken over by fractured machines, “Pulsar” floats closer to the surface, its microscopic electric bits itching to expand and unfold as it captivates the senses in a tense post-industrial experiment. “Kepler” further exemplifies the duo’s adeptness at pulsing percussive grooves and scattered mayhem while “Atlas” blasts us with sporadic glitch’n noise, bells and piano keys scratching their way through the ether.
Somatic Responses takes “Theia” to the outer edges, their powerful experimental audio decomposition is in full-force while a smattering of pummeling drums take over. Ingen launches “Pulsar” to looping and hypnotic spectrums where the likes of Aphex Twin would find comfort—fidgeting rhythms from deep space. Anodyne, on the other hand, wraps “Pulsar” into a fine-tuned amalgam of the original with further encrusted industrial-electro mechanics that are seemingly fluid yet entangled in emotive strands—a highlight of the lot. Not forgetting Defunkt Dialekt’s glitch scribbling wonder on their remix of “Kepler,” all manner of sound design and subterranean forces expand and contract as these abstract static drum pulsars rotate around a distant neutron star.
An engulfing, relentless, and surreal power-electronics EP that ravages the entire genre, leaving a trailing dust cloud.
Theia is available March 28 on Combat. [Bandcamp]
