3 out of 5

Label: Central Processing Unit

Produced by: Andriy Vezdenko

A fun but frustrating release, Noumen is one of the most directly Rephlex-ed disciples on the CPU label, nibbing quite directly from Come to Daddy and Windowlicker for a good bulk of the album. While this is, admittedly, distracting – at least for those of us who stepped in to IDM / electronica with those releases in heavy rotation, or maybe for Aphex appreciators in general – it’s not a lazy application, as Noumen’s focus tends to be more on melody and a beat than the deconstruction of that era of RDJ’s works, meaning we’re marrying snare rushes and jittery bass beats to an eye-on-the-prize song structure. This puts it closer to Syro, in a way, or artists from the scene who, overall, have tended towards more streamlined, composing styles, such as u-Ziq. And when Noumen lets their obsession drift into the background, forefronting that melody, often blanketed in some top-down ambience of fuzz, Apeiron really does shine. This happens at good points: opener Outlook is just a wild blend of emotion and danceability, and towards the end, Untrodden and the penultimate Alteralls shift this into cold, Radian territory, though again with that layer of ambience.

But with an average 6-minute track runtime, and 8 other tracks, there’s quite a lot here for comparison, and that’s when distraction sets in.

There are tracks that cut a sort of middleground between the glitchy BPM slavishness and the more patient, evolving works, but these overcorrect by being pretty repetitive: a heavy, steady beat; some contemplative synths; and loop, for at least those 6-minutes. Otherwise, it’s the Aphex Twin stuff, which unfortunately mostly just feels showy and a bit overlong, with Noumen trying to use every trick in the IDM playbook instead of zeroing in on an ideal and focused runtime. Still, even sprinkled within these tunes there will be some badass moments – Infinite Darq and Follow the Rat, for example, each find some really uniquely grimy or gamey bleeps that Noumen rightly gives some spotlight to… but then the song will keep going, and circle back around on the Rephlex bits.

As is usually the case with these talents, the skill / quality are there, and if this was your introduction to electro, it’s not a bad start: Noumen’s particular blend of melody and glitch is undeniably unique. But if you’ve come here from other sources, this instead reads as the artist mostly being held back by their influences, with only a few examples of Apeiron presenting fresh iterations on them.