Bleep

Surfacing onto empty shores like a message in a bottle from a place and time unknown, the music of Danil Avramov — aka Vtgnike — has gently bobbed under the surface since the Russian producer moved to Moscow in 2010. Ostensibly lifted out of obscurity by Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label, Vtgnike’s Steals follows his 2014 label debut Dubna in spirit and sound, hardened and downcast after a brief jail stint for minor drug charges. But the moody, oddball beats of Steals suggest a rarified playfulness lacking in more self-serious experimental electronic music. ‘Vechermix’ and ‘Sentimental Geometry’ treat melody and timbre like an infinite sandbox, a sonic philosophy echoed throughout this work of boneheaded wisdom.