“I don’t need to disparage most electronic music, but in a lot of it, people begin by putting a kick drum on every single beat,” Nelson Bean says. “I can’t do that. I try and make it a little bit slinkier.”
Impossible World by Black Hat Black Hat’s new Impossible World, Bean’s second release on Hausu Mountain, embraces that sense of isolation; it sounds like it’s intended not for a club but rather for the space between your eyes and the back of your head. Bean says he likes “odd rhythms,” and Impossible World is filled with broken blurps and limping clicks. “Digital Playpen” is a dreamy rush of melody over skittery beats, sounding like some of Aphex Twin’s more lyrical efforts. The eight-minute “Unfortunate Statement” has a simple keyboard melody and an itchy, staggering beat, both of which are diced up, varied, distorted, slowed down, and rephrased. It’s like having a song stuck in your head that you can’t quite remember, and that keeps falling apart as you try to run through the tune. “Far Gone” flickers on the edge of ambience; tinny computer voices noodle in and out of washes of sound, like little Atari characters bumping about in a Vangelis track. Davey Harms’s music is less introspective, both in composition and effect. While Bean uses a mix of computers and hardware to build his tracks, Harms records everything in one take with keyboards and effects pedals. Impossible World sounds carefully composed, each beat and note in place; Harms’s Soundsystem is all clotted jackhammer noise and repetitive sirens hammering at your skull. “War Dudes” starts with what sounds like a helicopter blade trying and failing to spin up, adds a drainlike gargling sound, and then throws on car-alarm feedback and other equally abrasive elements. It’s like “Sympathy for the Devil” scored for industrial appliances.
