Stakes
Modern Power electronics…TIP!!
https://www.rushhour.nl
Belgium’s reliably surprising Meakusma host Philipp Matalla’s curious debut LP contorting outernational folk and squashed illbient downbeats into fractal psychedelia.
Strange things are afoot in ’Stakes’, which advances on a decade of releases for Prins Thomas’ Internasjonal and Optimo, and more vaporous ambient electronics as Maxxa/M Pounds with a bolder incursion of experimental interzones. Any semblance of club form or function is out the window on this one, replaced by sheer psychedelic expression that balances lush and brutalist urges in the music’s kaotic harmonies and distorted structures that are possibly best compared with the hallucinatory nature of Kay Logan’s Otherworld works or the bittersweet gnarl of Leyland Kirby’s overlooked Intrigue & Stuff series.
Evoking low res AI emulations of panoramic scapes, or a computer struggling to simulate a sort of noise exotica, the music snags the imagination with its detuned scales and granular textures that get right under the skin. The shearing chromatic bursts of ‘In_blank’ trigger a collection that curdles and diffracts between stately ceremonial procession on ‘Same’ to sawn-off illbient on ‘Clip_Bars’. His feel for expressively detuned tone is most potent on ‘Plus’, and elusively gloopy in ‘North’, while ‘Tarko’ feels like Fennesz doing trap. Strange but true.
https://boomkat.com