- Don't let the name mislead you: Ex-Pylon isn't, presumably, a former member of the iconic Athens, Georgia rock band—although I suppose I wouldn't put anything past Studio Barnhus, the impish, oddball label run by Kornél Kovács, Axel Boman and Petter Nordkvist. "Hammerfest" is the most straightforward thing here, but Ex-Pylon's "straightforward" would rank as "seriously twisted" for virtually any other artist. Over an unbridled rush of 130 BPM kicks and scissoring hi-hats, a wash of gooey chords is put through the wringer like wet, twisted laundry, squashed by filters and run hither and thither. Midway through, the chords drop out and make way for a bassy synthesizer meltdown before flaring back up in a candy-colored haze; the whole thing is unapologetically full-on, a druggy approximation of techno from a feverish dream-state.
"Hoverfly" is almost as fast, but its off-beat kicks and electro-inspired drum programming lend it a more easygoing feel; soft arpeggios whip upwards in woozy, perpetually ascending cycles. You can tell it's been played live from the offhanded way the drums and synths unfold, kinking and crinkling like jammed-up printer paper. The four-and-a-half-minute "Hupiter" does away with the beats and leaves us levitating. Bell tones stretching gradually out of tune, it marks a position somewhere between Luke Abbott and Teebs—a nervous comedown from the preceding tracks, but no less lysergic.
Tracklist A Hammerfest
B1 Hoverfly
B2 Hupiter