I want to play this in the car wash. Blue drool slides down the windshield, mopped up by the rotisserie brush like a forearm brought to a chin’s dribble. The fumes of soap phase their way through the window — even tightly-rolled, they aren’t impenetrable — mingling with the hollow drone of synth pads. Each breath tucks a little bleach-y scrape into my ribcage; it feels like sitting on your car keys and letting them dig into your upper thigh. I close my eyes and let the percussive slap of cloth against the radio antennae assure me that we’ll be clean soon.
¿(❦﹏❦)?
On “There Was Only You”, UK-based producer Void Vertex opens with reverb-slicked jabs of piano that recall the steeliness of the early-to-mid-2000s — the sort of tones dispatched by Orbital, Aphex Twin, or even more kitschy acts like Linkin Park and Evanescence. Each pulse is tipped with a trail of echo that separates itself from the listener: the keyboard shies away from human intimacy, well-aware of its artificial means of formation. Our polarities are too aligned to meet.
Man has enough control over its Digital Audio Workstations that it’s willing to give the music created within them space. The sounds wrangled from a guitar or drum kit are slippery and mischievous, and they must be wrestled into submission. We make electronic music in our own image, but can only view it through the firmament/operating theater/windshield.
Void Vertex’s image is perpetually in bloom. Long, sustained notes are pulled across bar after bar like strands of gum or thread, unraveling and changing texture as simulated life buds around them. Bouncing atop malleable, almost melodic sub-bass, the hiccups of a disembodied voice sound similar to, but somewhat less grime-riddled than the chops employed by Crystal Castles on their second self-titled effort. They’re still not quite as squeaky clean as those used with twee-pop abandon on EasyFun’s “Full Circle”, but there’s something fresh and vibrant and so close to alive about them. It’s damp, hot breath against the window pane. The tune’s nose is pressed against the glass, leaving nostril prints behind, hoping to someday share Void Vertex’s air, his space. And yours, too.