The Snodgrass :: Growlbient (imputor?)

Like faulty machines speaking to each other, dissolved blips, bleeps, and haunted ambient structures begin to deform and deteriorate.

Strangely captivating electrical voids

Jordan Snodgrass’ latest for the imputor? imprint takes a deeper dive than we’ve heard previously. Still present are a myriad of found sounds, arcane melodies, and textured rhythms; yet Growlbient (perhaps its own genre) growls in the darkness. The seemingly improvised and lively sculpted 8-bit echo’n groove of “Archie” and “I Don’t Have A Maths” bend and shift as if molting in slow-motion. Within the rolling analog turbulence, tracks like “Elam Drals” manage to flow in abstract trajectories, submerging synth shifting and distant drones like a fine audio craftsman would. There are strangely captivating electrical voids (“Resonant Weirding” and “Centloch”) and a blurred sense of alternate realities that somehow make sense here. Like faulty machines speaking to each other, dissolved blips, bleeps, and haunted ambient structures begin to deform and deteriorate—simply listen to the skewed life-form that is “Don’t Visit My Grave So I Can Know Peace,” a peculiar gem that feels utterly shattered but creatively recombines itself. This aptly titled album—and especially “Spencer (Growlbient Mix)”—feels like an ode to the pioneers of avant-garde electronics and musique concrète (Morton Subotnick, Pierre Schaeffer et al) while remaining firmly as a Snodgrass production.

Growlbient is available on imputor? [Bandcamp]