Every so often, you start to feel nostalgia slowly creeping forward. When the aughts finally outgrew the “unremembered eighties,” retromania soon pressed forward relentlessly into the nineties, where art and visual culture soon indulged in the newfound novelty of the distorted past. Though too early to call it a full-fledged trend, it now feels like a new generation of electronic labels and musicians feel immeasurably indebted to the early turn-of-the-millennia downtempo and ‘IDM’ music from early digital auteurs like The Orb, Autechre, and of course Aphex Twin. Naturally growing from the cassette label kitsch of Vancouver’s 1080p, Ex-Terrestrial’s latest 12” on the label, Paraworld is a hazy IDM release, rife with skittering drums and cold synths that linger in the room around you. Tracks “Paraworld” and “Aletheia” offer similar lofi four-on-the-floor kick and 909 patterns as labelmates MCFERRDOG and Project Pablo, while “Blue Smoke” eases in with playful breakbeat that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Photek or Goldie release. The record juggles styles like never before in a way that feels natural, yet new. Like a chatbot gone awry or a Roomba caught in the corner of your living room.
More about: Ex-Terrestrial
