Previously known for creating his dense, chaotic sound tapestries with multiple laptops, professional sound designer and electronic musician
Richard Devine spent much of the 2010s building up an unfathomably large, overwhelming modular synth system. 2018's Sort\Lave collects a dozen compositions created entirely using Eurorack and Nord G2 modular units. The pieces are sprawling and spontaneous, and while it's clear that
Devine is a master of electronic sound construction, one can tell that he's continually discovering new sounds and rhythms, and his sense of excitement and bewilderment is more audible here than on his other albums. The album begins with "Microscopium Recurse," a 12-minute arrhythmic exploration that has far more in common with musique concrete than IDM. An endless procession of jolts, burbles, twists, and cartoonish effects, it sounds hyper-focused rather than random or algorithmically generated. The majority of the other tracks are beat-driven, although the beats are blurred and stuttered to the point of near obliteration on tracks like "k-0." The somewhat concise "Astra" develops a spacy, wonderstruck atmosphere around its ever-mutating beats, and the grinding, fuzzy "Pngtrk" manages to express a burning sense of machine joy. "Opaque Ke" comes close to a techno bounce without quite touching the floor, and "Eylansec" starts out closer to electro before being swept away in an analog flood. ~ Paul Simpson