Electronic music by its very nature is inescapably intertwined with technology; propelled by notions of progression and, some would argue, delusions of ‘forward thinking’. Releasing a series of fifteen ‘loops’, free to download and free to use under Creative Commons legislation (though contradictorily the idiosyncrasies on display here render the thought of them being sampled pretty strange), Yaporigami has pursued an aberrant and, in terms of this continuum, archaic sphere. ‘Loops 1.0′ establishes a perverse narrative wherein this relentless development has stalled at nineties Warp Records releases and IDM tropes, instead shifting axis to pursue noise music’s structural aggression and atonality.
Clean percussion, warm bass and crisp snares programmed to a relatively standard rhythmic template frame a hyperactive, textural virtuosity. Stuttering malfunctions and glitches grind against rapid micro-sampling; sonic leaps and lurches carved from slabs of white noise, fast edits, rewinds and spooling machinery all held in place by the rough implacable groove, unwilling to engage with it’s surroundings.
Technically striking, the strange juxtapositions, internal counter-rhythms and pitch shifted crunches occasionally overburden tracks whose reluctance to engage with progression or dynamics (an indication of their roots in Harsh Noise) already leaves them dry and emotionally barren. Occasionally austere to the point of drabness, too often the loops feel overexposed to the process, the relentless pauses and shudders empty of meaning.
The peaks of the record, reminiscent of newly activated strains of Industrial Techno, though unwilling to allow these undercurrents to ever fully emerge, originate from the moments of balance and the strange genre mutations created. Loop 1.06′s amelodic house 4×4, Loop 1.07′s deformed minimal techno and the dub pulses structuring Loop 1.10 all provide sharp respite from the sporadically monotonous excesses.
Like a dance record cultivated in the dark, nurtured away from conventional genre expectations, ‘Loops 1.0′ is a strange proposition and one free of the lazy club/headphone dichotomy often found in electronic music . An anomalous and sometimes great collection.
7/10
