Sleep 300 - Julienne
The New York-based label Kshack is quickly becoming one of my favourites. They can do no wrong. Release after release, the label ups its game every single time, seemingly having everything it needs to explode into the international scene. Kshack delivers a quality art style and a diverse sound palette that combines squeaky-clean productions with more experimental elements that always play with space, texture, and rhythm. In Sleep 300's third release on the Kshack imprint, Julienne, we're introduced to more 3D-focused music that further complements the duo's exploration into binaural experiments seen throughout their discography.
Throughout Julienne’s runtime, Sleep 300 experiments with bare-bones minimalism. They create percussive beats with little more than 808 kicks, delayed claps, and insectoid hi-hats that sound Like they're in a vacuum, not cutting through the mix but creating a divot within it. This playful interaction with space becomes a running theme throughout the record, with the first track, 'Disturbance Event', using panning modulation combined with drones to create disorder and tension. The same effect appears on 'Polykite' where the dissonant bleeps get into the nitty gritty of what cybernetic machine funk should be. Wayward beeps slowly snake all over, infesting most of the track's upper layers while phasing in and out of the foreground.
Sleep 300 further explores space with 'Decoherence,' experimenting more with frequency fullness. It slowly fills the frequencies with more noise that rises in intensity, like an engine spooling up. The use of noise builds so slowly that you almost don't notice until it drops back out to nothingness. While this isn’t a new technique, the combination with the eerie silence between skeletal kicks and hi-hats makes it even more impactful. It's the same for 'Anomalies', which exploit the duo's minimalism to create a more complex payout. Realistically, 'Anomalies' is a two-step beat with dub techno elements. What stands out is the sound design of all those elements, the creepy minimalism, the perfectly bouncing echoes, and the space created by reverbs, which make it much more engaging. Sleep 300's Julienne is not one to sleep on—the Julienne EP's minimalist clarity and head-spinning sound design, engineered for club play.
Tracklist:
Disturbance Event
Decoherence
Polykite
Anomalies
Gifts
Label: Kshack (2024)
Sleep 300 - Julienne
