Artist: @fausto_mercier / @trngs
Catalogue Number: IM091
Album: I'm Too Sentient
Release Date: June 25th, 2021
Format: Digital

Stepping in as a musical match-maker, Infinite Machine has paired up Fausto Mercier & trngs, two boundary-pushing sound designers, for a fresh EP of kinetic and visceral electronics. The pair are well suited to be partners in crime on I'm Too Sentient: both share a meticulously detailed approach to sculpting sounds as well as a keen interest in producing a sonic ‘uncanny valley’ in their output - manipulating organic sounds until their source is barely recognisable.

Fausto Mercier opens up I'm Too Sentient with Overcorp, a dramatic opener which only seems to get more frantic over time. Unfolding like an algorithmic Fibonacci spiral, Fausto’s musical ideas seem to shrink and appear within each other like fractal patterns. Towards the end of the track, the low-end drops out and is replaced by moody pad synths, an uneasy palette cleanser that glides over fidgety samples that refuse to sit still.

Next up, Bite Nails II Assert Dominance is another cerebral hit of complex, polyrhythmic laptop music. The beginning of this track seems far more ‘on-grid’ than Overcorp, but we are lulled into a false sense of security by Fausto who starts nudging samples into unexpected phrasings or squeezing new sounds into inexplicably small gaps within his drum programming. A real head-spinner of a tune!

Fausto’s final offering from the split, O O Doomscrll is potentially the most frantic moment of I'm Too Sentient. Humanoid-esque synths seem to wail through the arrangement, backed up by a punishing delivery of drum hits and manipulated organic sounds. As the title seems to suggest, O O Doomscrll could almost be considered as a soundtrack for our age of digital disorientation and social anxiety.

trngs opens up his half of the split EP with Organic Fabrication Core, a sonic headfuck if ever there was one. Jammed full of ideas and operating at break-neck speeds, trngs background in improvisational free jazz definitely comes to prominence in tracks like these.

Next up, trngs keeps the tempos fast with I'm Too Sentient For My Own Wellbeing - a track which sounds a bit like if Mark Fell had a breakcore side project. Musical stutters and iterative loops are abruptly swapped out for aggy kick drums which cut through the mix like a knife. The name of this song, again, nods to our accelerated virtual culture and the pressures that our contemporary information-overload can exert on us.

Rounding off the split, trngs’ () %%% () is a curious experiment across multiple temporalities and textures. Starting off serene and calm, the production degrades and glitches-out like an alien fungi permeating an ambient music culture.

An enthralling exploration of modern laptop musicianship, I'm Too Sentient is probably unlike anything you will hear this year. We suggest you press play and hold on tight.

Artwork by trngs

Fausto Mercier - Overcorp (IM091)

Twenty minutes of star-bright synths courtesy of @bdstf <3

With love,
Hyde Park Hi-Fi
xoxo

HPHF MS57: BDSTF

IM097 - @forces-music - Inertia
Label: Infinite Machine
Release Date: July 1st, 2022
Format: Digital
Mastered by Fausto Mercier

Infinite Machine is happy to welcome interdisciplinary artist, Forces, to the IM family with the release of Inertia, Joonas Siren’s fifth album since he began putting out music in 2018. With previous cosigns from Aphex Twin, Zuli & Daniel Ruane, Forces is known for creating sharp digital textures and ever-surprising rhythmic structures using live coding software such as SuperCollider and TidalCycles. 

With a background in fine art, Forces is never one to shy away from conceptual thinking about his output and this album is no different. Engaging with the work of theorist Franco Berardi (particularly recent book ‘Futurability’), Inertia tries to soundtrack the political malaise of the last few decades and the growing sense of powerlessness and inability to avoid the many crises generated by the structures of capital. 

Forces opens up proceedings with ‘Algorithmic Governance’, where doom-laden bass drones pulse and groan over erratic drum hits which play in alien time signatures, outside of the realm of full, human comprehension. The algorithmic control of the track’s title could refer to Franco Berardi’s interest in social media, a force which simplifies and monetises social communication, or it could refer to his approach to co-creation with his software of choice. With many compositions, Forces sets up rules or parameters in his code but allows elements of randomisation and evolution, inviting SuperCollider’s algorithm to become a co-author alongside him.

‘Morphogenesis’ begins life as a straight-forward, hard techno composition but things are not as simple as they may first seem. Over its 5 minute duration, the stable 4/4 beat seems to collapse in on itself, potentially nodding to the mood of our current socio-economic moment. This is followed up by the formidable ‘Swarm’, a masterclass in algorythmic synthesis that’ll slice your brain in half on first listen. A stuttering of buzz saw-styled synth tones sweep, stretch and pitch bend themselves in ways that would be almost impossible to achieve within a classic DAW. 

Named after the Berardi book that inspired Forces, ‘Futurability’ takes things in a slightly softer direction. Reminiscent of early Tim Hecker releases (with an added cybernetic edge), ‘Futurability’ has a sedative yet uneasy tone to it, as if the song is reflecting the dual sense of concern that things should change in society but our helplessness to actually change them, especially in the ecological or economic arena.

A tale of two halves, ‘Soul at Work’ starts out as a blissfully serene piece of what you could describe as code-based shoegaze which is then chewed up and spat out by algorithmic distortion and disorientating glitches from the midway point onwards. 

Forces ends Inertia on a more hopeful note with the David Graeber-sampling ‘Horizon of Possibility’. Unlike ‘Soul at Work’, the lush drone work is left intact on this arrangement - maybe signaling the potential existence of different structures that are more positive and robust for all.

With Inertia, Forces pushes his singular musical style even further, to more hyperbolic and emotive heights. Embracing the eccentric randomness of the SuperCollider software and working in concepts from contemporary theorists, this album is a mediation on the current moment created alongside technology that also feels hyper-relevant to today.

Inertia

PRE-ORDER

Forces - Spiritual Automata (IM097)

One spliff a day

Seven

detras de tus ojos miel blend

Welcome 2 My House!!!
First release of Special Little Ladies

Prod by: Dy.wsh & Osaya
Master by: Leo Lässig

Special Little Ladies - Welcome 2 My House

Rowan - Let Go

WAIT

ETHEREAL AMBIENT SOUNDSCAPES FOR YOUR PLEASURE

ETHEREAL - THE LOVE OF MANY THINGS

⋆ The Third Garden ⋆

This project is the follow up to my previous album "Beneath Our Love" 

Making this project has been so much fun and contains some of my favourite tracks I have ever made. I really hope you all enjoy what I have made for all of you.

Open your eyes, take a walk on the grass, and enjoy.

Thank you for your continued support for Kyoumeni 🤍

Faye ⋆

Rowan - Let Go

Extremely Gone

Related tracks