Bleep

Glasgow-based producer Toby Ridler, aka Becoming Real, offers up his debut long-player entitled Pure Apparition. Originally meant to have been released a few years ago, amidst a slew of experimental EP releases on Tough Love Records, Not Even, RAMP Recordings and also his own Cold War Industries label, Pure Apparition arrives slightly later than planned due to the crashing of a hard drive, resulting in the loss of all of Ridler's music. Invictus from the disaster, he now returns with a rejuvenated and maturer sound which really expands upon his previous playful, post-grime soundscape.

Carefully mastered by the one and only Rashad Becker in Berlin, he places a techno-oriented core at the heart of his arrangements. Their beauty lies in the way in which they unfold: the opener ‘Bleach’ layers rhythms, hints of vocal samples and melodies in reverse fashion and shifts their patterns; Ridler makes us question the given when his sustained sawing guitar notes melt into sharp hi-hats sounds that could equally be fragments of “ts” vocal consonants. The resonant drums of ‘Tibetan Moves’ invoke the squeezing, highly processed sawtooth synthesiser lead, and otherworldly effects sound like an urgent message from a different universe.