VAAG :: Twenty Two (Point Source Electronic Arts)

These perplexing sound sculptures are painstakingly designed with expressive layers to suggest a sense of uniform chaos; often broken, battered, and blistered to no end. But on the outskirts, we hear (and see) VAAG seamlessly twisting extraterrestrial glitch fabrics on Twenty Two like an experienced tailor.

Vast electronics develop and distort before our very eyes

This twelve-track collection, titled Twenty Two, is another example of VAAG’s ability to confound brain cells. While “Straite” feels as though it has been stripped down to its most basic elements—chopped-up beat patterns and Arovane-like ambience fuel the track as mechanically deformed melancholia takes over—the album opens with the cyber-crunch and disjointed alien rhythm of “Technik,” which is full of Autechrean glitch and detuned melodic tones and drones. Dive into the transitory sonic architecture of “UK–001,” “Go Back,” “Resonate,” “Hangover,” and “DaTones” to see how VAAG reveals these unusually compelling coordinates—a cavernous, echoing, and solemn dystopian location where vast electronics develop and distort before our very eyes.

These perplexing sound sculptures are painstakingly designed with expressive layers to suggest a sense of uniform chaos; often broken, battered, and blistered to no end. But on the outskirts, we hear (and see) VAAG seamlessly weaving extraterrestrial glitch fabrics on Twenty Two like an experienced tailor. Continuously building up, and breaking down. The “refinement of his craft” and tracks like the massive sound-scraping beauty of “Dark Vocals,” to the entangled chaos of “2021,” and the flowing escape of “Go Back”—imbued with old-school Funkstörung aesthetics— creates for another powerfully impacting album that remains in constant rotation around these parts.

Twenty Two is available on Point Source Electronic Arts. [Bandcamp]