At first, the beat is like a pack of Pick Up Stix that have been set loose in zero g and left to jitter and bounce around in a compact, three-dimensional space, the tiny emanations of their myriad chance collisions resulting in a constant pitter patter that hints at chaos but, in fact, reveals a logical system at work. Deeper material, more tonal than percussive, appears, but it seems more like an echo of the drum, a sonic shadow. It’s a sonic shadow. The beat is the main event. In time the rhythm congeals, gravity sets in, and the beat reduces to a singular enterprise. The track is “Since It Happened” by the Vancouver, Canada-based **A Scanner Darkly**.
Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/scannerdarkly](http://soundcloud.com/scannerdarkly/since-it-happened). A brief liner note mentions that the project was completed on two instruments, the drum machine MachineDrum and the modular synth BugBrand. More on the tools at hand at [elektron.se](http://www.elektron.se/products/machinedrum-uw) and [bugbrand.co.uk](http://www.bugbrand.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2).
Update (2013.04.25): Subsequent to this post, the musician [added more information to the track’s page](https://soundcloud.com/scannerdarkly/since-it-happened) about the music’s development, including this: [“Feedback based patches tend to be stubborn beasts as different things all influence each other in a non linear way, so it was really just trying to steer it in the direction I wanted rather than me actually controlling it.”](https://soundcloud.com/scannerdarkly/since-it-happened)