Bleep

Lee Gamble’s excellent 2019 run continues with Exhaust, the follow-up to February’s In A Paraventral Scale EP and the second instalment of his three-part album Flush Real Pharynx. This series has found the UIQ boss exploring the notion of Semioblitz - that is, the sensory overload one often finds oneself experiencing in modern-day spaces.

Similarly to In A Paraventral Scale, Exhaust is a record of tense club tracks and neurotic electronic deconstructions. Cuts like ‘Naja’ and ‘Switches’ are restless throughout, their quicksilver neo-IDM beats never properly allowed to settle. Imagine fusing Lorenzo Senni with Brainwaltzera and you wouldn’t be far off. There is also a hyperreal feel to some of the synth tones Gamble uses that nods to Sophie’s early work.

Exhaust remains edgy and paranoid even when the beats slow down, break apart or remove themselves completely from the field of combat. The frenetic, Rizzla-esque ‘Shards’ is often overwhelmed by grinding rhythmic noise; ‘Glue’ is a bad trip of delay-drenched trance synths; on closer ‘Saccades’ a breakbeat melts away to reveal a morphing ambience that is often disrupted by what sounds like motorbikes revving up a hair’s-breadth away from Gamble’s microphones. All of this adds up to a record which aptly captures Semioblitz in sound.

Exhaust finds Lee Gamble deliver another set of ultra-modern electronic wonders for Hyperdub.