Electronic music as headphone music has always been a fascinating concept. It makes a lot of sense. Of course deeply textured, subtle music based on intricate technological tweaks and subtle shifts and echoes is going to sound great when you're wandering some drizzly street in the middle of winter, but the fact that the weirdest of the weird stuff still somehow ends up in clubs—30-plus-minute ambient experiments, harsh noise ground down into crusty, seven-minute dance tracks, minimal drum machines decaying under a single sample loop—is just as interesting. Producer Evian Christ, who approaches electronic music from an instrumental rap angle, recommended listening to the work of Bandshell at Dummy Mag today. What's interesting about it is how he describes Bandshell’s music: "It will probably be in 7/4, drenched in white noise, and despite the fact that he’s never been to a nightclub, it will still get played everywhere from Berghain to WHP (I don’t really go clubbing, but I know this much because I’ve heard his music in both places)."
So Bandshell has apparently never been to a nightclub, and "Perc" is a song that is very much not obviously for a nightclub: synths twinkle and slowly degrade, their edges rough and worn with each subsequent echo. There's flashes of white noise, too. It's an ominous build without release, and it's worth listening to while thinking about your life. Or maybe it's a 6AM comedown track? Guess it's both at once, which probably says something about partying and regular life and what those two distinct things actually happen to share. Bandshell's Caustic View EP is out February 11th on Liberation Technologies.
Stream: Bandshell, "Perc"