Ambient, otherworldly, cinematic, mesmeric, and at times very odd, the Brooklyn-based electronic artist and producer Daniel Lopatin returns with a new nostalgia-based concept - constructing tracks from lost-then-refound Y2K CDs of 1990s and early 2000s royalty-free sample electronic sounds. The idea was supercharged when Lopatin had bookmarked the cache of sounds found on the Internet Archive, then discovered the page no longer existed, then later it was revived rediscovered - an unfamiliar feeling in our modern-day all-access culture, but one that used to drive all record collectors in the analogue-only era. Styles from ambient to drum’n’bass, Fairlight synth sounds and more leap abruptly into each other, so it’s not always a relaxing or coherent listen, but a fascinating one nonetheless. Opener For Residue opens with the sound of the ocean, faint bird sounds, and a wash of ambience. Bumpy is indeed just that - with weirdly jarring rhythms and loops and scratches of waterfall trickles and warm bursts. There are also abrupt shifts on Vestigel and Rodl Glide, where a gradual oozing of sound suddenly goes into rave samples. There are more coherent fusions Lifeworld, one that feels like the soundtrack to a sci-fi movie, with ticking ghostliness, the whoosh and fluttering of otherworldly life on Measuring Ruins, Cherry Blue’s bleeps in a dream-like soundscape, or the woozy jitterings of DIS, which oddly includes that old familiar speaker interference from an old 2G mobile phone. A niche oddity, but all the way through to the rippling harp sounds of closer Waterfalls, enjoyable like a mashed-up dream. Out on Warp Records.
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