Too often, sterility gets thrown around like it’s a bad thing in music and something to be avoided. I love lo-fi, noise-wash, and blow-out-your-ears static as much as everyone else (admit it, you do) but there is some irresistible draw to clean sounds for me as well. The sound of symmetry, matte surfaces devoid of all but the echoes off surrounding walls and a speculative mind to aid. It’s cordoned tones, segregated audio where everything has its space and rules. It’s definition.
Being able to convey emotion or inspiring some ephemeral feeling with these clean, symmetrical sounds just makes for some of the most compelling music. At its core, “1 4 7 6” is a passive experience. It’s not something that will throttle you, at least initially. But true to that sterile, ambient sound, the stuff a notch above it all, there’s something floating above the matte surface here. A phantom of the melodic, gliding through your brain like smoke. It’s not penetrating so much as it is haunting.
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