Brian Tester’s newest work, “Spectral Capital 2 & 3”, starts out by building up a tipsy base of amelodic, busy-body techno beats…only to let devil-may-care loose with swirls of gaudy swells, shrill drones, & dirty-neon phasings to whoosh on by like fog that’s late for a date and bury those beats under an avalanche of distress. The mess is where the jam is at and BT keeps it unpredictable and chaotic amidst the faux-metronomic aesthetic. When not subverting the technosphere, BT wades arms first into a sea of dying machine moans, electric hum, organic pulse, and power-vac static. This is all just side 1. Side 2 plays much the same game, but with a different, jammier palette, favoring greater emphasis on space, hypnotism, groove, & release. Throughout the hour-long journey, entropy and stagger are the major driving, cohesive forces, but there are certainly some parts to tap the toes along with and other parts to nod-off to. Just don’t plan on getting comfortable. Don’t plan on anything other than ceaseless stimulation and bewilderment and you’ll be fine. Probably.
and/or
—Jacob An Kittenplan
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