S/T by Topdown Dialectic

The dissociative electronic designs of incognito American producer Topdown Dialectic originated as a set of software strategies, rather than compositions in the traditional sense. The recordings are captures and edits of various nonlinear sound-systems, shifting conditions, and reactions to internal changes. Despite such a conceptual basis the music is hyper-sensory, evocative, and emotive, meshing the impossible sonic geometries of early UK warehouse bleeps and IDM stutters with the gritty spatial abstraction of Basic Channel to chart dynamic and diaphanous electronic topographies, at once decentralized, parallel, and environmental.

The eight identical-length tracks comprising this self-titled vinyl debut demonstrate the breadth of the Topdown sound world: shuddering, circuitous, textural, kinetic. Algorithmic arrhythmias phase and pulse and oscillate, chopped voice samples flutter within buffering static, peripheral melodic fragments glitch and glide in and out of time. It’s an aesthetic both autonomous and expressive, impersonal and inscrutable, in keeping with artist’s roots as a central operative in revered anonymous cassette collective, Aught. This is compelling, composite music, instigated as much as created, like obscure machinations occurring deep in the labyrinth of a server somewhere.