various / 14 tracks

14 tracks: 4th World feedback

As the feedback loops of sonic culture continue to tangle in ever more bewildering knots, we're drawn by to the evocative ecology of simulated environments for exploration. To some extent, these zones were imagined by Jon Hassell and summed up in the phrase "4th World" - "a style of music employing modern technological treatments and influenced by various cultures and eras." Today, equipped with ergonomic, or even bionomic, technologies, this aesthetic is at the core of some of the most fascinating, visceral, and moving music around, allowing borders to be broken and interesting fusions to take place. Electronic rhythm programming allows producers to achieve patterns impossible in the "real" world, rerouting bodies in new ways while advances in post-production render these sounds into ever more vivid and ambiguous virtual parameters, producing the most exotic fantasies in sound. This selection crosses vectors between the Afro-Futurist memes of DVA and Aksak Maboul, to the embryonic Finnish psych of Hertta Lussu Ässä, from the humid synthesis of Clams Casino to the 'Green Fields' of Ford & Lopatin, and the anachronistic grooves of Deon and Ital. These artificial shapes and spaces attempt to move closer to a syncretic form of man and machine. It may seem abhorrent to many, but call us perverse: we love it.