Advanced Waveform Synthetix—moniker of Minneapolis-born DJ and producer Freddy Fresh and who worked in the underground Hip Hop and Techno scenes with equally innovative results—is back with “82 random sequences” released on the Minnesota label Electric Music Foundation.
Fantastic enveloping of little synthetic bass warbles trill in such a way that the kick passes just barely past your threshold of perception. The echoing and frequency-shifted screams of circuit boards that crop up every few measures are weird and crisp. Beyond advanced waveform synthesis, it’s the work of an expert.
The percussion is light and minimal, like a soft rain of shakers and rim shots that provides a gauzy, clean atmosphere to guide the ear through the synthesizers’ contortions. “Aware” snarls with a devilish break pattern fried by distortion as the audible buzz of wires push past their capacity to make way for Acid that whirs like a dental drill.
“Singapore” gives ’80s Hip Hop structure a snippet of cinematic violin, eerily repeating the same four bars as ghostly alien howls drift overtop, innocent of gravity. Then, a melody as colorful and whimsical as the rain in an animated movie strikes goggle-eyed technicolor trees and flowers as they clumsily avoid the downpour. The atmosphere ricochets between lighthearted and bizarre so quickly, it gives the impression of flipping channels from horror to cartoons to war footage to sci-fi in some late night, half-conscious state.
The closer sounds like being shrunken down to transistor-scale. One hears the latent rhythm of electronics firing in series to shape the music.
-Winston Mann
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