Glyphic

A short though utterly worthwhile Trentemøller set at The Forum on Thursday night inevitably left a musical rift in which several more of the Danish DJ’s phenomenal tracks ought to have been. So it’s with this unshakable urge to listen to some form of awe-inspiring electronic triads and dissonance that the following record has been discovered, one that certainly doesn’t disappoint. Described as being ‘somewhere between dubstep, IDM and electronica’, Boxcutter‘s latest is a gem among a monotony of tracks on the latest release charts. Under his alias, Barry Lynn dominates the Northern Irish dubstep scene, and is poised to continue leaving his mark with this album. Everything from its cover design to its track list syntax screams something different. And upon entering the world created by the wonderous Glyphic oeuvre, one embarks on a journey through a jungle of electronic glitches, grinding turns and standing wave vibrations of distant trumpets and chiming pan flutes.

In architecture, the term glyphic serves to indicate an ornamental channel or groove, and this cross-over terminology could not be more apt. ‘Imagine you’re beginning a journey, not in time but in the mind…’, and with those words opens the Bonobo-style ‘Rusty Break’. Sometimes sounding a bit like Trentemøller in his darkest on Last Resort, sometimes a bit like Massive Attack on 100th Window, the richness of sounds continues to push its scope to know no bounds. Presenting unique undertones redefining the dubstep genre in a manner similar to Burial’s latest Untrue, one is reminded of the rawness of the Beastie Boys (‘Bug Octet’) smoothly gliding into the sounds of Cairene downtown traffic (‘J Dub’). Buddha Bar chillout meets Holy Fuck‘s exotic experimentals, incorporating synthetic breathing, garage, nu jazz, and drum and bass elements that herald to the work of Andy Barlow. And of course after all of this, you’re not even left with the chance to notice that there are only eleven tracks on there…