The second 12" on Hypermedium pairs the work of two purveyors of newfangled weirdness and wonder, Berlin-based electronic artist Ruben Patiño and Athenian whiz kid No God Ritual.
Patiño is one half of 'fluxus-techno' outfit N.M.O. along with drummer Morten J. Olsen, with releases on The Death Of Rave, Where To Now? and - shortly- Diagonal. A frequent EVOL collaborator, he has been highly active in the field of contemporary electronic composition, releasing his music on labels such as Anòmia and Lateral Addition, as well as directing videos for Powell and Not Waving. Strategies On Self-Promotion And Autoreferentiality is a fine piece of modern computer synthesis, an anthology of digital sound scraps, mixed, edited and transfigured to assemble a bizarre version of musical press kit. 8-bit melodic snippets, noisy swoops, slowed down synthetic mumbles and further electronic oddities piece together a track that somehow finds the precise balance between 'concrète' seriousness and goofy, futile intellect.
On the flipside, No God Ritual carries out an exercise in mutant dub. Having been making electronic music since 2010, his experiments in electronic sound synthesis culminated in 2013's Nuum. Since then, he has taken part in many exhibitions and festivals building installations that explore computational technology and sound. On Understanding Is Compression, an irregular rhythmic pattern sculpts the track's deep backbone, while its sweet bubbly bass cracks open to reveal a series of scything synth lines and algorithmic punches. The end result is a truly idiosyncratic sound, at times both exceptionally warm and spasmodically hyperactive, that delves further into the matter of contemporary digital dancehall.
credits
released September 30, 2016
Mastered at Schnittstelle by Andreas Kauffelt
Cover designed by Joe Gilmore
teetering on the edge of rhythmic but standing firmly in the ground of odd tonality, this release leaves enough sonic space to infer one's own ideas about the form. Percussive type sounds bonk through the mix but all of them have a softness and power to them. bkudler