Yvat is a sound designer, it seems.  He even manages his own sound design company in Bucharest, where he resides.  I know this because all of his press says so.  Rarely do I see mention of his work as a musician, and maybe there’s a reason for that; vaguely reminiscent of mid-period Autechre, Yvat’s new EP Chroma (his first release for Israeli record label ±G6PD Records) sounds at least as “designed” as it does composed.  That said, his beats, while not exactly complex, are fairly original in their composition, and the noises he uses to augment those beats morph and evolve as each short piece of this five song set progresses.  It’s quiet, it’s mysterious, it’s robots sitting around a crackling fire.  On an album this consistent and this short, it’s not easy to pick out highlights, but the bass synth melody of “Trawl” and the spiffy way the synth melodies interact with the toned percussion in closer “Nand” both tend to stick out on repeated listens.  If you’ve been up on electronic music at all in the last 12 years or so, nothing Yvat offers on Chroma will sound new at all; it does, however, do its breezily rigid brand of hip-hop beats and spooky synths about as well as anyone’s doing them right now.