People Pleaser

Drawing dashes from the many vats of sonic devilry bubbling away in Sharp Vein’s laboratory, this record flits from aggro-militant club stomp to chaotic noise storm to disembodied narcotic drone, and that’s just the first track. There’s a playfulness to the proceedings, a knowing dismissal of what’s “supposed” to come next, that paves the way for journeys to unexpected destinations and surprising emotional states. There’s a (winking) harshness, a proginess and an uncompromising nature to the textures and structures in these songs: fiercely digital, artificially wrought angles, algal blooms coloring their corners. 

In the artist’s words: “This album marks me at my most extreme. The name People Pleaser is an ironic appellation, ‘cause I mainly just did what I wanted/followed my bliss when making these songs. What emerged was something that began during a residency in Iceland about a year ago: a return to the digital not-quite-clubland I used to inhabit during my early producing days, but with some broadened experience from my forays into other soundworlds. The result is more intense and more textural than pretty much anything else I’ve released. The loud moments are louder, sure, but they’re unceremoniously interrupted by chasms of silence, tempo changes, and weird timbral additions. The episodes comprising these tracks and this album are carefully corroded and corrupted, reeling from rust to shine and back again, all bitrotten to the core. “