Lit Harness is the debut solo album by
Asher Levitas, co-founder of the mysterious electronic duo
Old Apparatus. The pair were associated with dubstep primarily due to the appearance of their first two singles on
Mala's Deep Medi Musik, but they had a much more abstract, boundless experimental style akin to
Demdike Stare. Lit Harness similarly contains some deconstructed club music elements, but much of the time it seems more like a haunted form of rhythmic ambient music.
Levitas harnesses waves of distortion, with sporadic beats occurring as emphasis rather than to provide an easy structure for dancing. Some of the tracks are downright chilling, such as "In the Eyes," which includes a suspenseful pulse, snake rattling, and distorted, aghast screams. Other cuts are more easily describable as ambient, but they're a very eerie sort of ambient filled with ghostly voices, and they're prone to flaring up into more aggressive moments. "Blessed Mother" is a somewhat unexpected darkwave pop song resembling
Zola Jesus with more smoke and mirrors. "Anticipating Violence" ends the album with a whirl of screaming sirens and splashing static, and as the title suggests, it feels like it's going to erupt into unspeakable carnage, but it never does. The album initially seems bleak and alien, but repeated listens reveal a very unique form of dark beauty. ~ Paul Simpson