4 out of 5

Label: Computer Club

Produced by: ?

Electronic music’s creation is… a black box to me. I suspect it’s the kind of thing I’d better understand with some actual synths in hand, but even making that plunge can be a question mark, as – for me – just reading about the different considerations of the sounds can be more than a bit puzzling. I’ll do some deep dives and get a high level grasp, but ask me to regurgitate that info, or put it into practice…? Not so much. So when you then go on to tell me about ‘algorave’ music being code-derived tunes, sometimes written (in code) on the fly… well, okay, that differs from my understanding of how it’s done, which factors into my review of algorave pioneer Alex McLean’s release under his Yaxu pseudonym, ‘Peak Cut.’

Namely: that despite there being a theoretically impressive set of electro / IDM / D&B tracks on the 6-tune EP, with playful chop-ups of glitchy but danceable beats, and creative weavings of VGM-esque melodies / tones and more “traditional” modern synth sounds, there’s a certain distance to the recording – something that’s a bit calculated. “A bit,” is, of course, probably an understatement, given that it’s exactly calculated from the algorithmic roots of the composing style, but is that… really so different from setting up sequences on a box? Not being hands on, I can’t say, but even before reading about McLean’s background, that separation exists on Peak Cut. It has a fitting home on Computer Club, as that’s home to more leftfield composers, who might not have body-movin’ as the prime motivator, and even though these tracks definitely keep that as a baseline (every song zips through a couple of amazing sections of bouncy beats), the way McLean holds on to a loop and kind of step-by-step stitches it to something else just ends up feeling some steps removed – read: a bit less emotional – than what you might hear from IDM / electro composers working with synthesizers.

Accepting, again, that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But instead of the music ranking as surprising, or experimental, its quirks come across as calculated.

That said, it’s a set that becomes better the more time you give it, as the EP shifts along an axis of slightly more abstract to drilling beats by its end, as though rewarding your patience with some more direct bangers.

…And: I’m grading this on a curve. Because alongside the music, packaged on a USB by CPU / Computer Club, Alex has included the programming language / program (Tidal) along with all of the elements used for these very tracks. That’s an openness I love seeing in the genre, and is what encourages me to give Peak Cut further “spins,” appreciating that its seemingly less organic nature of construction is rather this kind of community-fed, arguably more direct and evolving concept.