Loden: Buggy

Built of of the same hip-hop-governed IDM that’s become all the rage in the past few years–since Prefuse 73, DJ /rupture, and others became afflicted with the aural leanings of early 2000s Warp and Tigerbeat6–Loden’s smashing Buggy is a fair contender in the same arena. Loden works through seventeen tracks of average to excellent trickery, surmounting the slurry of similar contemporaries often enough to sound tempered, with a great ear for taste, while never escaping to wankery and always seeming, at the least, skillful.

On “Rubber Floors Give More Bounce” he bevels the pixel-shaped bass-sound that thwacks behind the foreground. Amid many metallic sounds, there is a building melody line. It’s an almost-soaring legato acid riff and, surrounding it, are sprinkles of less-jagged pixel sounds. Intelligently dancing forth, “Waking Up Radio Problems” employs a semi-submerged synth part that flecks like acid from a worn seven-inch. For “Alice Go Go Go” we hear skittering scratch sounds manipulate the sub-melodic elements of the track as a partially-filtered lead phrase echos under-filter. Throughout Buggy, Loden brings good fun. Unlike the work from some of his peers, there’s seldom a moment that’s too self-serving or too subjective to spell out anything useful to the listener.