Yesterday’s featured track took the chitinous sound of insects as the inspiration for its beats. Today’s track likewise takes nature as its point of origin, but more along the lines of the Aphex Twin song mentioned earlier. In the Aphex Twin piece, “Grey Stripe” off Selected Ambient Works Volume II, the audio is more sound than music — that is, along a continuum of conventional understandings of those terms. “A Hard Rain” by Eric Kuehnl begins in similar territory, as the title suggests. The rapid rainfall is a flurry of pinprick static. Then, 20 seconds or so in, just as the rain has taken on the sense of white noise, a rubbery, fanciful beat, reminiscent of ancient IDM, kicks in. Its frenetic energy and burbling, brittle acoustics build on the natural rhythms of the rain, which seem to continue to linger in the background.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/erickuehnl, where there is more from Kuehnl, who is based in Berkeley, California.
