Bleep

Nicolas Jaar’s excellent Other People imprint presents the debut LP from mystery duo Ancient Astronaut. The oxymoronic moniker is fitting, considering how these pieces blend essentially traditional modern music forms with harsh, almost primordial sounds and textures. On ‘A1’, a barrage of breakneck samples and what sounds like a field recording made inside of a tornado are twisted into a rugged techno banger, do not ask us how. ‘A2’ is a filthy, half time thumper that speeds up and slows down and overloads with distortion, while ‘B3’ pulses to the beat of a sonar-like ping that’s submerged in aquatic FX. Breaking things up a bit is extended piece ‘B2’, the sound of disintegrating tape looped through malfunctioning machinery with increasingly ominous results.