Hemlock label boss puts out his first full album. Recorded over the course of a week in the summer, the whole thing feels claustrophobic and humid (and more lo-fi than his usual output). It borrows the bad mood of the darker strains of dubstep and techno that he's worked in before, but it doesn’t fit in either of those genres. He’s always enjoyed blurring the line between bass and drums, and he takes that tendency even further than usual here, with lots of songs and parts of songs that have rhythm but no obvious percussion. Good music for a bad fever dream.

FCC clean

1. barely there synth pad and pulsing dry snare, both slowly rising. sirens (and other city sounds) and heavy slowly undulating bassline enter around 1:00. a long intro that sets an appropriately disconcerting mood. the beat you’re half expecting never enters. fades out on bass and sirens 4:53
2. and here’s where it kicks in. sampled clipped echoed voice saying “warning!” with jumpy snares in the background. sneaky sounds snake through the background. bass slowly grows, getting louder, closer, and buzzier. rising static enters just after 2:00 and the bass starts getting queasy. bass gradually fuzzes out, eating itself and everything else, slowly coming down over the last couple minutes. spins down in its final seconds. 5:18
3. reggae love song vocal sample opens, and is quickly strangled and beaten mercilessly by a huge pulsing bassline. or are those kick drums? hard to tell. warped piano hits throughout. second piano line takes the foreground and bassline drops out for a bit around 2:15, but then returns and new piano leaves shortly thereafter. levels are loud and nasty throughout, compressed to all hell. 3:53
4. galloping kick drum, accompanied by ventilator sound and heartbeat monitor plink. everything but the kick and a heavily reverbed snare drops out for a while around the midpoint. probably an appropriate soundtrack for a case of anesthesia awareness. 4:01
5. the most oppressively humid track on an oppressively humid album. static, swaying fuzzed out synth line, ringing swirling synth line. gets rhythmic around 1:00 with a snappnig cymbal and a glitchy edge to some of the fuzz, but never gains a beat per se. variations of the aforementioned elements enter and leave and slowly morph. gets dubby and echo-y in the second half. leaves by evaporating. 5:03
6. fuzzed out bass synth and an occasional buried scream. lo-fi kick drums knock around “like two midgets in the backseat wrasslin” (to quote outkast’s big boi). finds its groove around 1:40, when the drum programming smooths out (but stays texturally filthy). brickwalled like #3. 4:34
7. dull synth glow for a while, then huge distorted kick pattern enters at 0:40. relents for a bit just before 3:00, but slowly rises back to its prior level of intensity. kicks relent again for a bit just before 5:00. everything except the overdriven kick and a low synth pad recede at the end, then the kick leaves it to the pad for the last few seconds. 7:32
8. strange synth squiggle. rising fuzzy all-consuming bassline. crackling static enters around 1:00, stays and gets filter swept throughout. bass drops out for a while in the middle, and slowly finds its way back in. bass leaves again around 3:00, rhythmic static and very low hollow snare remain. cuts out abruptly. 4:43

recommended: 5, 3, 4