HHOST - "LADDER TO WAVE" CD

NICE MUSIC: Following releases on Altered States Tapes, Bunyip Tracks and Moontown, NM presents ‘Ladder To Wave’ - a spectacular new recording from anonymous Australian producer HHOST, in high resolution digital audio.

A cracked assembly of tuneless percussion warps and bizarre tonal occurrences, ‘Ladder To Wave’ casts a dynamic spectrum of minimal elements, hitting with maximum impact. Balancing shuddering sub bass plots against high frequency synth and contact mic precipitation with key assistance from mastering engineer Stephan Mathieu, HHOST has ascended this new work to an icily digital plateau, sonically well beyond previous releases. A glassy digital splaying which impossibly reconciles oblique outbursts of analogue hiss, failing circuitry crackle and noised synth chirps into a magnetic paradigm which seems to snap together.

The doped lumbering of ‘Mirrored Blue’ thuds heedlessly beneath a hi frequency grind zone just above our heads, mutating to sputtering electrified clouds in ‘Silver Rain Gold’. The latter is a place where bass portals, sparse claps and 808 rimshots perforate regular gulfs of literally nothing, veering into some of the most broken ideas of how two-step programming could possibly malfunction whilst still retaining a recognisable essence. Closing tracks ‘The Blood Of Hours’ and ‘Coppered Levitation’ clatter through what could only be described as a gentle pandemonium, unfolding harmonic interplay and deceptively low key progressions. HHOST careens toward the closure of these five tracks detonating into a maze of fuckerised trap equipment and blu-ray boom bap thump - a hairpin into a climactic single-punch ending.

A sickening stasis objectifies ‘Ladder To Wave’s ingenious weapons of inertia - HHOST never allows the listener a canter in one direction, punking us by eerily leaning forward in suggestion rather than ever actually blasting off. Once we adjust to cabin pressure, it becomes searingly obvious that everything we need is already right here in this spot