8 Tracks: Of Nonharmonic Beauty With Positive Centre

Signal Structure is taken from my Monad XIX EP on Stroboscopic Artefacts. This track is a reflective look at memory and the clarity of recollection. I found it buried in a large project and at first could not remember making it. This is excellently represented in the video by Maria Mendes in which she used an old Russian slides projector and some slides I’d been carrying with me that belonged to my father.

Eric Holm’s “Andøya” album on Subtext was created using contact microphones picking up vibration through electric pylons on a remote Artic Island. Excellently crafted into a collage of huge pulses, bursts and ripples creating unheard soundscapes. Brilliantly reimagined here with the video for Stave by Subtext label boss James Ginzburg.

Using the simplest sound components of sine waves, pulses and noise, Ryoji Ikeda produces lush edible clicky textures set to his own black and white glitched video patterns. Essential to see live but easily as enjoyable here in data.matrix.

The title track of Arca’s Xen album blends a huge swipe of musical influences into one beautifully chaotic track. Jesse Kanda supplies an excellent visual assault of warped bodies and epileptic strobing. Quality stuff.

Discovered this track a few weeks back. Released on the excellent Irish label ‘Variance’. Is just a brutal, intense trip into total destruction. Couldn’t ask for more.

Textural mastery from Emptyset here with Collapse. From the Youtube Description “The video for ‘Collapse’ looks to match the sequence of processes and distortions within the audio, by affecting footage and animation through a series of analogue junctions. As a means of synchronising sound and image an electromagnetic coil was used, which when triggered by the audio outputted from a power amp created corresponding visual distortions. This resulted in the audio directly driving and shaping the signal itself. A cube was used as a structure that could be collapsed throughout the video, shifting from solidity to a series of disparate distorted planes, still locked to the sound but no longer contained in their original state.

To celebrate the 5th birthday of Berghain: Emika recorded “the cooling rooms, storage rooms, PA rooms….lighting rigs, strobelight[s], fridges….cloakroom, toilets, water, glasses, swings” of Berghain and gave the source material to residents and club affiliates to make tracks out of. These tracks were brought together in a huge limited edition compilation called ‘Fünf’. So many great tracks on it – Gestalts by Substance (DJ Pete) is one I always draw on in DJ sets.

Probably my favourite record of 2015.Sa Pa’s album (Translates as: Seasonal Tradition) combines field recording, synthetics and huge amount of finesse into one of the most nailed records I’ve heard in ages. This opening track ‘Deya Navigation’ is an intensely beautiful scene. I could listen to it for hours.