Music: DJ MDMHey tape

If you're looking for DJ MDMHey's usual take on contemporary pop via fractured, noisy remixes, head over to soundcloud. This tape is another beast all together.

I can't say it's much like any releases I've heard by Rob Bekham's main outfit, Terror'ish either, although that project's most consistent feature is its inconsistency: ranging from harsh, clipped pink noise onslaughts to tape loop abstraction, to fuzzed out drum machines and everything in between.

This is atmospheric synth music, think a more Industrial-leaning take on Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack, minus the bluesey Film Noir affect, plus throbbing digital drums. The warbling, detuned oscillators and studied-over ADSR envelopes are there, as is the attention to atmosphere, though it's a distinctly tape saturation environment we're talking about here. (Praise is due to the mix, which manages to find an ideal level of natural tape-distortion/compression, without becoming murky or ugly.)

Side 2 begins with a more aggressive rhythm than anything on Side 1, calling to mind the recent "Tech-noise" style of MTVE-favs Container and Unicorn Hard-On, albeit with much more attention payed to harmonic progression, and with out the obvious genre tropes. This is loosely Synth Pop, but its minimal aesthetic and dark tonalities make it a unique effort. The sounds may be rooted in Depeche Mode and Cabaret Voltaire, but these are the weird outtakes that could never be. Dig it.

Label is Ranky Tanky "Champs" (or R.T. "Champs"?, I don't fucking know.) (It's Noah Anthony of Night Burger/Form a Log's label.) Edition of (more than one.) Decent art.