Hyper-Minimal MP3s

There’s music minus one, and then there’s music that’s little more than one. “Music Minus One” were those old LPs of arrangements lacking a single part, so you could practice your Dixieland clarinet playing or whatnot. “Little more than one” describes how spare, how thrillingly threadbare, are the mere crusts of tempo-suggesting static that comprise the four tracks on Nicron‘s Cod.coq, from the relatively new Complementary Distribution netlabel. (A modest Hungarian enterprise run by Andras Hargitai, aka Soutien Gorge, it was launched this past July, and Nicron’s is its fourth release yet, posted on the 23rd of this month.) These are less instrumentals looking for a soloist or a singer than they are single elements of an imaginary rhythm track, their testy little syncopations chattering away like some anemic bboy’s heartbeat. If you’ve ever stared at a blueprint for an as-yet-unbuilt skyscraper and marveled at its architectonic pleasures, then Cod.coq is your cup of hypotheticals, as pregnant with possibility as it is barren. More info at the Complementary website, bitlabrecords.com/cod.