“Goobs en Regalia” by Craque is several things. It’s a single individual improvising on a synthesizer. It’s a standalone track by a musician who’s released enough full-length collections to know the unique pleasures of the online single. And, at various times throughout, it’s the sound of something rhythmic and tasty a split second before it kicks in. The improvisations that Craque performs are a mix of gurgling tones and snatches of fuzzy static. The one-sentence liner note describes it as follows: “A bit of an excursion through the twisted roots of what’s through us.” The playing regularly ekes out these memorable little segments, like an avant-garde performance built entirely from fragments of pop music. Numerous among them have the sound of a proper riff in the process of winding up, but they rarely if ever repeat often enough to take on any sort of compositional solidity, at least until the very end when a blippy rhythm is allowed to continue at some length. Many of them in the process of winding up sound like they’re about to unleash some serious funk, like the gurgling is about to congeal into a serious beat. It never happens, which is no failure; that sense of tantalization is a core part of the track’s pleasure.
More on Craque at craque.net. Track originally posted for free download and streaming at soundcloud.com/craque.