Barcelona-based sound artist Daphne Xanthopoulou finds beauty not only in the mundane sounds of our everyday lives, footsteps and chimes and ringing telephones captured with wildly varying fidelity, but also in the intense, noisy glitch-scapes she coaxes from extensive processing of those recordings, presenting two dimensions of reality simultaneously—though moments on To Be Brave that feel like “reality” are quite sparse. Unlike September’s Jaguar 100%, the heavily altered auditory acrobatics of Xanthopoulou’s text-sound ranting is at least not perceptible on this new release, and instead the buzzing digital abstractions are woven throughout ennui-vignettes, the two often coexisting as on “New Moon” where the alien pulses of the former lurk beneath the meditative object percussion of the latter or on the blasting opener “Warm Milk” for which the opposite is the case. This coexistence occurs with differing amounts of unease, often undergoing a drastic change within a single track, as is the case with both of the aforementioned tracks; “Warm Milk” evolves from harsh to hypnotic, “New Moon” from soothing to sinister (the wet smacking noises used near the end really could be some heavily processed mouth sounds, I honestly have no idea). The stretch of cryptically numbered miniatures in the second half of the album, preceded by the equally diminutive title track, embark into deeply physical sound-object arrangements that further blur the divide between the thumps and bumps of reality and the electrical storm hanging above. I’d be lying if I said To Be Brave wasn’t intense, but it’s so concise and well put-together that the more discordant elements are digestible. Even if it doesn’t sound like your thing, you should try it; this is a very special and exciting new album.