Sidewards Ebb - Plays Diffspring

 Released: October 30

Released late last month, Sidewards Ebb’s latest album takes a rather interesting approach to creation by utilizing fragments of punk and pop songs that are then run through a modular setup that resynthesizes, distorts and randomly plays back even smaller pieces of sound. If the approach sounds interesting, then the results are even more so as we are taken on a ride of highly abstracted sounds that feel ever so slightly familiar at times but are simultaneously far too removed from their sources to be recognizable in any way. Some of the tracks come across as much more ambient pieces like the opening track “He’s Trying.” You can certainly hear the swells of sound and the heavy artifacting that occurs as a result of the process, but there’s a quietness to it and a certain softness in the tails of the sound that feels strangely soothing. 

Then there are other pieces that double down on the madness of the process like “Any Sense,” which leans heavily on awkward looping and heavy artifacting. It’s actually kind of hypnotizing despite being far removed from an ambient approach as whatever track was used is turned into a recurring electronic gurgle of sound that comes in fast moving waves until it progressively becomes more elongated and stretched as the end approaches. “Eyes From” has a similar vibe to it as well, but has this uniquely choppy effect in it like preserved some of the upbeat rhythms of whatever pop song was harmed in the making of it. 

The album is a very interesting listen that, for me at least, hits this odd middle ground in between noise and pop music. Each track retains enough of the aura of the source material while transforming the actual manifestation of sound into something wildly different. It’s somewhere around what a DJ set might sound like if you were on obscene amounts of Benadryl but it’s that vague sense of familiarity that runs through the album that prevents it from coming across as something dark or vaguely scary. Just a lot of sound mashing and smashing that results in jittery tonal weirdness.