4 out of 5

Label: Analogical Force

Produced by: Julien Chastagnol

Breakcore producer Julien Chastagnol drops his third Analogical Force EP, taking us into the next leg of his journey across IDM and glitch disciplines: finding a sound of his own.

That’s a snipe at someone who’s been working at this for 10+ years as of this release, but its been my main criticism of Chastagnol’s work, that it has been very sparkly paint atop well-worn foundations. The sparkles are applied thoroughly and with much skill, but early on it was just too much showmanship for my tastes, and as that calmed down (on the well-named Smooth Working EP), it revealed a certain predictability at the core of Julien’s compositions.

But Iterations proves to be, again, accurately named: Julien widens his influences to incorporate some of the ambient beats of mid-era Amon Tobin, as well as the 2020s bass-heavy broken funk of Squarepusher, and then does something much more important on top of that: he structures the songs to justify these inclusions, as opposed to solely acting as showcases for BPMs. That adds a layer of true emotionality on Iterations that wholly caught me off guard.

Now, Julien is still a breakcore dude, but he saves it: the opening title track takes its time to establish an exploratory mood before going insane with the drilling; Messsh is even more focused, centering around a grimey beat that Julien breaks apart and puts back together several times over. Google-ize finally gives over to a more “traditional” RMD sound, but it’s more earned, as we’ve experimented significantly in the lead-ins – it’s then more rewarding to revel in the track’s more familiar payoffs and breaks.

There are still degrees of showmanship, of course, with Messsh and Glitch Jockey having kind of endless codas of extra ideas, but that’s an acceptable way for Julien to work that stuff out instead of making it the entire focus. Finally, we get a remix of an older RMD track which shows just how far the artist’s style has come: the original is a bog-standard glitch track; this new version maintains some of those hooks while marrying it to a sultry, shmoozy vocal and beat, completely altering the mood of the tune and smoothing out its pace.