4 out of 5

Label: Computer Club

Produced by: Poborsk

Utterly bizarre – delightfully bizarre – Poborsk’s glitchy Computer Love totally threw me for a loop on first spin, and to be honest, I’m still not sure I get it. But I know I’m growing to love it.

…That initial pass, though, I (thought) I identified what was keeping me from being immersed in these awesomely varied and jittery IDM tracks: while the album’s sound is linked by relatively muted beats and a warm, analog synth sound, songs rarely seemed to “peak” in any significant way, and Poborsk would change styles on almost every track, going more clubby or electro or minimalist and back and forth, without much conceivable design to it. It was, and it is, kind of baffling. Return listens, though, allowed me to dig out the grooves inherent in every track, which linked the album beyond those core sounds and gave it more of a consistent rhythm – it’s just upon the surface that the artist is constantly changing the pieces. That is, instead of a typical set of repeating melodies, Computer Love’s tracks will morph those same melodies within a song, never repeating exactly the same beat you heard, and instead presenting it in a wholly different way. This was initially unsatisfying to an ear expecting something to hit at a certain point; more patience has me hooked to it.

The glitchiness remind me a bit of earlt Apparat or Lithops – as experimental as the latter, but with the soothing edges of the former; Computer Love is neither one of these exactly, though, and emerges very much as its own thing. The lack of build up does underwhelm the creativity on occasion, with most tracks’ runtimes about 3 and a half minutes, which seems to give Poborsk room to play around with all their ideas, but not always take them to a conclusion. Scattered throughout we get some true IDM bangers, though, where the bass is there and the track wants us to dance; Computer Club smartly put two such tracks on the 7″ version of this, which would’ve given me zero doubts about Poborsk’s all-star status. The full, digital album is more spread out and less immediate, but it’s also prompted me to listen more attentively… and certainly given me an artist to follow.