Disquiet

The opening cut on Simio Superior‘s Como na Radio (from the Portuguese netlabel test tube), simply titled “2,” is the sound of one pachinko machine rocking. Well, it’s the sound of one musician, Andre Abel (the label’s website translates his pseudonym roughly as “Simian Sapiens”), moving beats around in a hall of aural mirrors, as little blurps set off minor whirlpools of noise, banging against each other in freespace. It’s one of four cuts on the EP, which ranges from churning, percussive static (“Catabina, latrina”), to heavily processed vocals (“Tez morena”), to a mix of field recordings and expressly understated mumbling (“Laranja papaia”). Throughout Superior/Abel concentrates on small sounds that have heavy impacts, less focused on microsonic details than on the impression that individual elements can have over an extended play. Get the full set at monocromatica.com/netlabel.

By Marc Weidenbaum