Experimental Electronic Music
In Rotation across the past several weeks and months, this multi-view column surveys a shifting electronic landscape shaped by bold and forward-thinking artists. Expect fractured rhythms, glitch aesthetics, abstract experimentation, mechanical precision, industrial pressure, melodic detours, and bass-heavy electro transmissions from Alavux, Annie Hall, Delta Division, Koloah, Low Battery Orchestra, Modul, neuroboy, Nocto, R.I.O.T, Trofusin, and Voltaire.
Sacred Drift is an enjoyable listen, and the clicks, reminiscent of the click-hop movement that emerged in the early 2000s from artists like Microstoria, Pimmon, and early Matmos, bring back those familiar click sounds that add curiosity to glitch textures of an ambient piece.
Ritual Fever dives deeply into ritualistic influences; both the vocals, reminiscent of chants and mantras, and the earth-rattling sustained drones help send the listener into a trance, as if they were lying down in the middle of a field, waiting to ascend into a higher world.
From bubbling synths to irresistible basslines, Teleportations makes every stop on its cosmic journey worth visiting.
Five tracks of somewhat dark atmospheric exposures, ranging from just over five minutes to almost eleven minutes in duration. Most of the action is perhaps within the realm of atmospheric drone arts but there are some shocking incidents that give an enlightening bump to the constant listener.
The downtempo chug is still there, but it’s been processed through decades of IDM evolution, filtered through the same sensibility that informed Beans’ abstract hip-hop work and Schematic’s experimental roster. DL Poisons’ unsettling in the way that the best experimental electronic music should be, familiar enough to feel grounded, strange enough to keep you off balance.
Across four tracks, Invictus Hi-Fi leans into sampler grit, psychedelic color and rough-edged rhythm science, conjuring a sound that sits somewhere between warehouse afterglow and mature bedroom-studio experimentation.
Substak returns with Abrasive Deluge, a stark and immersive dive into eroded ambient textures and haunted sonic debris.
shizukesa’s destroy//destroy reframes lo-fi as a disciplined study in motion and restraint, where stuttering rhythms, minimal structures, and carefully rationed momentum turn negative space into the record’s primary expressive force.
Indeed over the course of this first for ASIP KILN fire shivering shapes and febrile forms into a timbral trade-off of hi v. lo-fi; a quiet riot of rhythm’n’sound ranging from “DrnkGrlfrnd” with its ‘aquarium-on-fire radiance’ to “Maplefunk Diptych”’s ‘garden groove of field-recorded percussion’ to the ‘sizzling whiteout’ of “Deacon Rayhand.”
Minimalistic guitar music that works as an easy going soundscape for a minimally distracting background that does not require your absolute attention, but it can also satisfy the need for details and perfect construction.
