Kinesthetiac - I'm Discovering Days Of My Life
(Horrible Recordings 2016)
The latest installment in Jared VanMatre's increasingly deconstructive Kinesthetiac discography is at once a Gregorian patchwork of appropriated pop acapellas and YouTube videos, an alternate universe episode of Merrie Melodies scored by Autechre and a tape's worth of new-age healing music eaten by a Volvo cassette deck - though not quite as polished or dance-able as the project's bubblegum-IDM self-titled EP or the post-eurobeat of earlier works, I'm Discovering Days of My Life showcases the most inventive side of Kinesthetiac's varied and prolific Soundcloud output. There's a Dadaist sense of sense of collage holding the 22-track record together, its crackling field recordings and samples pasted to cinematic synthscapes with glitter glue and digital Scotch tape. All is blisteringly paced and perpetually forward-moving: ideas, textures and melodies are hurled at the listener, leaving them to perform a juggling act between each eardrum. What cohesiveness is sacrificed, however, is eclipsed by the sheer amount of novelty and moments of maximal beauty afforded by this laissez-faire approach to songcraft. There's the Hanna-Barbera "running" sound effect that acts as a DnB break on "Sunburst Atrium", the lo-fi local news bumper piano of "In Memory" and the cavernous reverb that floods "Imaginary" - a Vangelis-esque soundscape that reminds me of Washed Out's "A Dedication" sans percussion plus gobs of distortion. Listening to I'm Discovering Days of My Life feels like embarking on a trans-planetary safari - it's composed of familiar sounds re-arranged in new ways, terrifyingly alien and teeming with extraterrestrial oddity.
