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Released: January 28

The latest from German electronic artist monad node is a highly improvisational  album with a seemingly unpronounceable name. Perhaps someone may be able to correct me on the last assertion, but the assertion of monad node's improvisational skills is set in stone. The variety of tracks here is quite impressive, ranging from mechanical drones and ambiance to rhythmic wonder worlds surrounded by beautiful warbles, warps and other synthetic noises. Such range of compostion is refelcted in the wide variety of tools used in the creation of this release to include modular synths, old tapes, radio waves, and random assortments of creatively repurposed junk. The level of processing, re-processing, and then re-re-processing on some of the tracks is almost absurd in its results, but it makes for some incredible audio subversions that come rather unexpectedly.

One example of the unexpected is "HiHat_Sample_Pack." As one might expect, there is absolutely nothing resembling a hi hat to be found on the entire track, just strange distorted rumbling and whooshes that may or may not be reversed and stretched hi hats creating a bizarre bit of semi-rhythmic noise and static. Conversely, the song that precedes this track has some incredible bits of crisp percussion that carry with it some weird bots of tonal noise and some oddly melodic wah-wah sounds, almost like a guitar so far washed out to be unrecognizable. 

Along with these interesting motifs, monad node also pack in some rather interesting drone tracks such "Unrein biz zum Abend." On the surface it is much a drone track but there are many different additions here that makes things interesting, including a penchant for meter-indifferent pitch shifting of auxiliary tones. This seeming indifference to meter is deceptive though, as even in the most apparently random compositions, monad node carefully construct long drawn out patterns that reveal themselves subtly to create something engaging and enigmatic.