CRTMUSIK

It’s 2020, and it is gauche and passé to describe something as cyberpunk. Yet here we are. Cathode Ray Tube’s Katabasis album (on M-Tronic) bathes deeply in these chrome and neon tropes, but still manages to have its own strong identity, exuding a (possibly wry) optimism that belies its own liner notes and artist’s statement.

Cathode Ray Tube’s work often evokes glittering hypermodern metropoli, rainy nights, and all those clichés burned into our minds. Katabasis revels in these images without irony, with great enthusiasm, and with deep connections to dub and IDM that sets its work apart from mere nostalgia. The aesthetic feels shallowly retro—looking back 20 years, tops—but with a sense or organic messiness and hope that provides it a fresher, more modern perspective, with a tripped-out angle that sets it apart.

Analogue artifacts skitter about Cathode Ray Tube’s work—dubbed-out delays and unstable oscillators wobbling in between tight arpeggios and bright digital percussion. It lurches from the tropes of ambient to electro to IDM to dub and back again, often within a single phrase or movement.

The gritty delays makes the sound stage organic and deep, but most of the intensity comes from the artist’s synth patches, forcing the drums to function more as textural filigree. It’s a counter-intuitive recipe for electronic music, but one that’s very successful. Katabasis is filled with as much melody as it is with crisp, sharp rhythms, which might be what helps it exceed the sum of its inspirations and references into a discrete and absorbing body of work in its own right.

The gritty delays makes the sound stage organic and deep, but most of the intensity comes from the artist’s synth patches, forcing the drums to function more as textural filigree.

Perhaps Cathode Ray Tube’s primary skill, across his many releases, is the ability to make extremely long albums, with luxuriously labyrinthine tracks which don’t wear out their welcome. That is a skill not to be undervalued or underplayed. Each song has just enough repetition to keep the listener in the headspace, just enough variation to keep the pieces evolving and changing to stay interesting. His mix density rewards repeated listening.

We dare not call it ambient electro; sure, it rewards attention when given and also just sets the tone and you can just let it glide in the background. But Katabasis emphasizes on energy and tension over calm.

Cathode Ray Tube is unafraid to merge past genres into fresh, dense, and evolving songs whose widescreen nature belies the simplicity of their constituent layers. Unlike some 21st Century electronic music, it feels composed, purposeful, and performed. Like the red, green, and blue electron guns of the artist’s namesake, Katabasis is a sum greater than its parts, and is worth a rainy night’s listen to take you to a past future of your own.

ANYONE CAN PLAY. New album drops December 4, 2020 on Condition Human.