In the unceasing, flickering LED glare of packets transmitted and received; handshakes made; protocols observed – we retreat like some amateur Gnostic through the floor of the world. The deep web of hyperlinked opinions and comment threads and feeds and feeds…passes overhead. Amongst the blankness – our stark disengagement – we find a tribe of people quite oblivious to the world we’ve become inured to. They’re friendly, dissenting, curious and volatile. They welcome us like brothers. Their fleshly presence and corporeal preoccupations quite alien to our digital existence (which looks something like Tron for those of you wondering).

Our resident ethnographer declares that we should refer to this grouping of people not by the collective noun of ‘tribe’ – for he is a revisionist, and reviles imperialist vernacular – they must instead be described as a ‘club’. And away from the silent chatter of the neon flecked world up there we are we are indoctrinated into their Club music. This dark hidden space, utterly failing to provide the blankness we craved, thankfully.

Jonathan Kusuma‘s new EP on Indonesia’s Space.Rec, despite its 4/4 base, scuttles around a vortex of styles and sounds – separating it from the straight Techno it emerges from and throwing it into our orbit. The title track Misi contains a breakdown where holographic incarnations of Liquid Liquid play Optimo on MIDI steel drums made of steam. How we were ever expected to resist that I’ll never know. The music surrounding the (several) percussive breakdowns is rooted in minimal floor-tom techno – like a slowed version of Faze Action’s sublime classic, In the Trees – while managing to expand off into spacier Scandinavian enclaves between those rotating breakdowns.

Jonathan Kusuma – Misi

The Misi EP came out last week digitally, so check your favourite purveyor of FLACs.

Troll Town visited us with their Sword and Shield back in April but now return with an EP self-released through the absolutely wonderful bandcamp service. The second track on the Square Rhythm EP, Escape Plans, is a thing of delicacy in the face of repetition; loops deployed not to subjugate but to enthral. The gentle of organ sounds and synthesised bells are an oasis in this supposedly blank void we hide away in. A cool place to rest, out of the glaring black sun. An authoritative voice wishes to know what’s going on in our head and how they can save us from ourselves. We wish we knew.

Troll Town – Escape Plans

Get the awesome Square Rhythm EP from Troll Town’s bandcamp, for free, here.