Review: Byte.clone – Crossover Distortion (Bit Rot, Jul 28)

I think that glitch and data-based music will always be enthralling to me not only because of its volatility, but also due to a certain surreptitiousness that it always seems to have, like it’s not something that’s meant to be heard by human ears. Even when processed using direct action by the artist or composer, as is the case with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen’s modified sound chips, there’s a sense of innate unpredictability, a feeling that the abstract textures at work can never be completely controlled. Crossover Distortion revels in this unavoidable digital whimsy, shakily constructing itself upon a ever-shifting base of piercing zaps, synthetic rumbles, and plasticky drones, all of whose permanence is constantly in flux. There’s no real overarching movement or structure to any of the six ambiguously titled tracks, but here the words “directionless” and “ambling” are not negative descriptors; adding any more order to these inherently erratic sounds would introduce a new, human-induced artificiality, stifling that which gives the music its enrapturing uniqueness in the first place.