Daryl Groetsch’s recordings under the Pulse Emitter moniker embody the modern musical equivalent of a chemist in the laboratory, gradually refining his practice over the course of innumerable combinatory permutations and experiments. His catalog encompasses drifting electronic space-outs, baroque webs of synth harmony, even the occasional detour into noise abstraction. Groetsch ties all these strains together with the simple (call it “comforting”) presence of his human body inside a fortress of hardware, breathing sessions to life in an organic process of hands-on-knobs tinkering, improvisation, and transcribed composition.
But what goes down when TMT mega-favorites Beer on The Rug — merchants of distinctly hyper-digital, post-internet art — put out a Pulse Emitter tape? Jam Digital Rainforest and marvel at how fluidly Groetsch constructs his labrinythine sessions from a sonic palette closer to Far Side Virtual than And The Stars Go With You. Sparked in a literal sense by his acquisition of new and customized voice libraries for his synthesizers, Groetsch spins out melodic leads and consonant backdrops that mimic the tones of steel drums, bells, brass, and human vocal formants. Far from diluting his typically lush compositions, these patches embellish his ideas with surprising textures and physical presences. Digital Rainforest transplants the MIDI muzak familiarity and sterile tones of what we might know as “vaporwave” (and the library music that inspires it) into the realm of meticulously layered analog performance, sketching a personalized vision of synthesized music at the crossroads of disparate decades and traditions.
• Pulse Emitter: http://www.pulseemitter.com
• Beer on the Rug: http://www.beerontherug.com
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