With the Shibboleth EP, Osaka based artist Metome delivers a fierce sonic collage: experimental to its core, it presents a vibrant embroidery of sound where the spaces in between are as important as the stitches themselves.

Arrangements composed of fluoro synth leads, Rhodes chords, tumbling bass, chopped vocals, pitch modulation salvos, and nuances that evade definition fester and rub up against one another. These intensely tactile and flexible elements are rendered through an intricate filter shaped by pop music, grime as well as nu-jazz into punctured grooves that aim to knock the listener askew. Although they brook no dissent and no compromise, they evidence that polish and power are not mutually exclusive.

As striking as all the fragments are in isolation, at the heart a solid sense of harmony remains. The sections that make up the tracks are compressed into terse blasts, lined up one after another, lending the record a distilled character. Transitory nodes supply balance as much as they suggest the imminence of acceleration or collapse. The EP was envisioned as the soundtrack to a fantastic aerial dance: an interplay between movement and reticence, levity and weight, and attraction and rejection is indeed overall. With an ambient iteration as curtain call, a moment of composure does eventually arrive. Although a sensation of peril never quite leaves, it provides space for exhalation.

The Shibboleth EP is the first release on supərpawərz, a Brussels based contemporary electronic music platform.

Mastering by Jeremy Cox. Art and design by Oliver van der Lugt.