NCRTYP - POWER

Released: August 29

One his return to Dustopian Frequencies with POWER, UK-based artist and composer NCRTYP professes his deep affinity for post-punk. But the album feels like a lot more than just some run of the mill post-punk inspired electronica. There’s a wide swatch of themes and motifs, most of which come across as less aggressive than you might think but keep a certain edge to them. On the opening track, “PWR,” the dark and grungy synth atmospheres meet a rather live-feeling drum beat to give us the first raw glimpses of what this album is about. And something that stood out about it to me was the propensity for a certain level of slew in the rhythm - a feeling that felt like the beat would disassemble itself at various points only to reform in a mostly familiar manner. It’s a move that kept resurfacing in various ways throughout my listening experience and it imparts a very particular feeling that I can’t quite explain.

On some tracks, NCRTYP plays very loosely with the rhythms like in “YOS,” a track that for the first seems to refuse a solid rhythm in favor of some rather wildly swinging hits. It feels a bit like a wave, actually, with the solidest part of the rhythm hitting around the middle of the wave and then the looser parts coming around the ends. There’s other instances where it’s almost like a breakbeat adjacent feeling, such as on “LTL.” The rhythm feels not out of place for a breakbeat track and the vocal cuts on it are ever so perfectly clipped and played. This one plays things more soldi with the rhythms but keeps things interesting in the melody and vocal sampling.

The album injects a lot of variety into itself, making things far from one-dimensional. But it’s extremely consistent in its aesthetic as well. It maintains a somewhat grungy feel the whole time and recycles some of its motifs judiciously. The vocal sampling is quite a highlight in the album, and it shows itself enough to be consistent without ding overused. And the rhythms really keep the show going here, even when they are imputed with that slewed feeling to give things a slightly and tastefully off-kilter vibe.