- Tape and wax collectors with macabre and peripheral tastes should keep an eye on Sound+Matter. It's a record shop with locations in Malmö and Copenhagen, as well as a publishing platform for the labels Sores, B-O-D-I-E-S and Kess Kill. Sound+Matter have released records from artist like Merzbow and Basic House alongside reissues from obscurer veterans like Geneviéve Pasquier. It's also hosted the vinyl debuts of newer acts, including the Swedish duo Grand Mal x. Bleie, the alias of Oakland-based experimental hardware musician Sarah Bly, is the latest.
Certainty Is Only A Feeling is a techno EP with subversive intentions. Bly's uncanny sound design and use of shifting song structures makes this a curious club record that would turn heads on the dance floor. You're less engaged in the rhythm than the odd sounds, such as the spidery melody on "Elil" and the swooping noises on "Tharn" that sound like airplanes carving loops across the sky. The spiralling sensation in "Little Thousand" is inspired and disorientating. There's something palpable about this one as it mutates and throbs in a physical and affecting way. The title track does away with beats altogether, delivering one of the EP's spookiest and most enthralling moments with a totally unexpected final jolt. Bleie has made a mysterious and memorable contribution to Sound+Matter's expanding cosmos.
TracklistA1 Elil
A2 Tharn
B1 Little Thousand
B2 Certainty Is Only A Feeling