Melbourne-based artist Bob Streckfuss is gaining traction with his ability to meld nature and technology into a synergistic whole, like the Captain Planet of music production. Under the guise of 0point1 he has released several impressive pieces in the past, and now June has unearthed his debut album, Clean Dirt.
New ambient electronic music from 0point1 is so fresh. Definitely worth a play, or two, on repeat, all day, everyday, for the rest of your life.
Teaming up with Sydney label Feral Media, the project was formerly stylised as ‘0.1’ before changing it to the distinctly more Google-able 0point1. Making it clear that he doesn’t aim for tags of any sort, there is a distinct point to the decimal: “I didn’t want to be called something that could be easily categorised”.
The first taste of his uncategorisable creations appeared on a Feral Media mixtape before he released The Dance of Mechanical Birds, a seventeen-minute epic of creativity and ambition, packed full of instruments, found sounds and field recordings “swallowed by a computer”. He has developed a sound that shares Jónsi’s penchant for sonic beauty and Girl Talk’s ability to mash a world of sounds together, and a full length album has provided the appropriate room to explore.
Eggborn opens the release with a busy and obscure tapestry of sound that morphs into something more recognisable as an intentional song, with distortion and synths overlayed with intriguing quirks and vocal fluttering. The first two tracks clock in around two minutes, creating express moments of methodical madness that display Bob’s talent for intensely intricate composition.
Radio Edit is layered with mostly electronic sounds that slowly builds and gathers momentum, before ominous cello-like chords add organic beauty and depth. Softism – familiar from the aforementioned mixtape – and Cartoon River are the first apparitions of Bob’s preference for indeterminable vocals, the airiness of which adds pleasant texture to the chaos of unfamiliar sources of sound. Explaining the reasoning behind abandoning the confines of language, he notes that it enables the chance to “come across new meanings, where the music doesn’t have to be defined by what is being said in the lyrics”.
Surf Kid is a cartoon-like one-minute glockenspiel explosion, whereas Wasteland slows the pace down to a saunter and reveals a musical landscape that is conflictingly serene. Often throwing up titles that are seemingly as mashed together as his beats, the tasty Star Jelly exhibits vocals in the key of Bon Iver. The noises that make up Pink Metal are often as liquid as they are metallic, leading into final track Wormchild Singalong which settles the album to its most calm, drifting it to a pleasant conclusion with dreamy vocals and synth in harmony.
Clean Dirt is a collection of astonishingly beautiful yet chaotic compositions; with 0point1 creating a sound that is very much his signature. His DIY aural collages combine the natural and synthetic elements of music production, with dreamy vocals burying lyrics amongst the complex rhythms and wide-ranging electronic effects.
Perhaps most impressive is that there is not a sample in sight, with every quirky sound packed into the album a result of field recordings being turned into beats and textures. 0point1 makes it seem like the ideas are endless and ever unique, backed by the capacity to take sounds from the everyday and ram them into your ears in an orderly and captivating fashion.
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