Bleep

Damon Kirkham, best known for his output as one half of Instra:mental and his solo work as Jon Convex, launches an exciting new IDM project: following the revival of his Kid Drama moniker and a respective string of drum’n’bass releases on his own CNVX imprint, the first full-length under his new Mikarma disguise arrives via the very same, yet breaks out in a new sonic direction. Using only equipment that was available in the 90s, he explores the depth of the decade’s IDM, but sees things through 2k15-coloured glasses. The result of the pain he experienced after the breakup of a long-term relationship, Passes translates those emotions into sound: insomnia turned into restless, beatless synth patterns (‘Passes #1’), the oppressing, angst-inducing soundtrack of ‘Solitude’ with notes of self-doubts creeping in, before he finds peace in the ambient, slow-burning melancholia of ‘Endings’, a coming to terms with the immutable, signalling a weighty, wistful readiness to move forward.