The Microbit Project release Prosit Neujahr on a Russian netlabel also named Microbit is three brief tracks of light glitch. How light? There’s as much space as there is sound, and rarely more than two elements at once. How glitch? Short bursts of a restricted number of elements play off each other, like a forgotten algorithm caught in a tight nested loop. The result is a series of semi-random occurrences, not so much melodies as the occasional repetition of proximate materials — parallels that once in awhile make themselves heard, and leave the remote expectation of reappearance. It’s a tune that is broken, yet just barely functioning — that is a glitch rudiment, perhaps the glitch rudiment. The first track is the keeper, tiny little digital marbles making their way on a lightly textured grid, bounding, bouncing, wavering (MP3). There’s a delicacy to the track that is especially enticing, the way the thin wisps of audio play atop a low hum that serves to highlight their near-ephemeral quality.
Three tracks in all, at archive.org and microbitproject.blogspot.com.
As you may know Microbit Project is one of several aliases for Eugenkha(?) who runs 45RPM Records.