Title: A21
Artist: J Shadow & Hypna
Label: Plasma Sources
Cat Number: PS001
Genre: Hardcore
1: Access To Infinity
2: Incubate
3: Automata
4: Motherboard
5: Force Lens
Hardcore is, conceptually, some of the most challenging and imaginative music around. Funny thing is it’s not at all my preferred genre. However, I find myself inexorably drawn towards it because of what it evokes. ‘A21’ is very much a work that I find endlessly fascinating because collectively it takes me to places outside my comfort zone and soundtracks a world which is, while alien, uncomfortably more and more familiar as time marches on. The sound here is incredibly well-focussed and the feelings it conveys prescient. The inhabited landscape is well known, but still manages to surprise. ‘Force Lens’ exemplifies this nicely with its bottom end spiralling in and out of focus to the rhythm of intermittent breaks and paroxysmal machine gun bursts. ‘Motherboard’ with its beatless sonic bass and arpeggiated ambience, and ‘Incubate’; a soundtrack to movement in the egg chamber on an uncharted moon. ‘Access To Infinity’ lays the groundwork for what is to come on the back of a largely beat less opening which evolves into a bottom heavy, depth charged snapshot of organized confusion, something which comes into much sharper focus on ‘Automata’. This is a synaesthetic piece of sound design that invites the listener to get lost in its layers, with an assurance of dislocation from the waking world.
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