AUDINT

Ghostcode (Album)

Genre: ELECTRONIC

2LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Cult, secretive sonic research faction, Audint, yield this 16-part, concrète trap and electro soundtrack to an expanded graphic novel, ‘Ghostcode’, which declassifies a decade of findings since their ‘Martial Hauntology’ manifesto. Crucial listening for tin foil bonnet types and sonic fiction speculators - RIYL CCRU, Kodwo Eshun, Kode 9, Mark Fisher, The Sprawl, Terminator II, Bladerunner, The Matrix, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross OSTs

With 16 parts correlating to chapters of the previously released book, the ‘Ghostcode’ album shadows its narrative instrumentally, using a palette of vaporwave electronics, industrial-strength concrète, and the roadwise tropes of trap and electro, to bolster its riveting ideas. At its core, its not too far-reached notion is that for nearly a century, the music industry has repackaged pain as its product’s USP. From blues to soul, hip hop and R&B, thru trap and drill; the socio-economic proletariat have provided the wealthy with a constant source of entertainment. Where once it was licensed and cut to record, pain is now given freely as data to be mined and resold on a exponentially greater scale. ‘Ghostcode’ follows that line of thought to a future where Irex2, a rogue AI, competes with a Columbian Black Hat in a race to develop holographic soldiers powered by torment farmed from Pain ©Amps.

The music follows with a thrilling technical leap from AUDINT’s ‘Martial Hauntology’, rendering 80 minutes of engrossing aural architecture ranging from the diffused ballistics of zipping drone rotors on ‘CORPONATIONS’, and sci-fi sublime of ‘Holo Accords’, to 0PN-esque refluxes of ‘Memory Seeding’. In ‘Rapparitions’, the sort of Chinese trap mutations found on SVBKVLT, and shot thru with the pomp of military fanfare on ‘Korsong’, with THX strings at the IMAX in ‘Pain Coin'’, and a blast of John Zorn-ish free jazz industrialism on ‘Chesterfield Fitting.’ Taken alone, or coupled with the book and its film for best results, ‘Ghostcode’ is indispensable for the discerning sci-fi and sonic fiction fiend.

2LP (Black Vinyl) (16)