I first heard “Bliss is This” at Iowa’s Zeitgeist Music Festival almost four years ago when it was still being held inside an old racquetball court. Stewardesses set up his equipment, very quietly announced, “This… this is something called ‘Bliss is This’,” and then faded in the input from his mixer and proceeded to play the entirety of the album front-to-back. It was perfectly messy, turning the room into a cavernous echo chamber that blurred the rhythms together into a wall of sound both maximalist and encompassing.
Now, four years later, the cassette iteration of “Bliss is This” hits just as heavy. It’s a lyricless drift through 30 years of EDM tendencies, kaleidoscope-filtered, and glued together by a healthy amount of reverb and fuzz. Dance music for headphones rather than the dance floor. An expression of the emotive capacity rhythms have to move us, in addition to making us move.
credits
released March 12, 2018
Lotta blood, sweat, & smoke.
Thank you to my pals, fans, and exes and Micheal Woods.
Most importantly, thank you!
***
"This tape could almost be a document of a dance club set, save for surprising juxtapositions and unusual transitions that frequently turn listening attention toward the inner textures of the music: the subtle body within “body music,” if you will. At times I’m reminded of the ecstatic pinnacles of electronic bliss in the music of Dugout Canoe, while other passages seem to reach back toward that weird period when industrial bands started to coalesce around pop forms. Bliss is this, indeed."
-Scott Scholz, Tabs Out
London-based trio Damos Room and soundsystem artist LYAM come together for an irreverent EP offering a glitchy take on ambient techno. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 8, 2023
Working with several different NYC-based producers, experimental artist Alexandra Drewchin presents a haunting, fluid new mixtape. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 12, 2019