The eponymous debut from dejSOMAjzla (pronounce it however the hell you want until proven otherwise, I always say) is modestly labeled “IDM,” or “intelligent dance music.” Despite it being one of the worst musical descriptors ever conceived, the infamous label does tend to draw in a wider audience, but at the same time I don’t think it’s quite accurate here—if intelligent dance music is a thing, then this is galaxy-brain dance music. There isn’t a single millisecond of dejSOMAjzla that isn’t fractured and fragmented into microscopic shreds; silence abounds, everything is relentlessly impermanent, and there’s little to no rhythm to latch onto… and yet the music still feels so full and present, like something much larger is being shakily transmitted via a faulty channel, yet despite being splintered into tiny, nonsensically arranged pieces, its holistic energy remains intact within the invisible bonds between them. Each of the three tracks begin with such erratic arrangements that it often sounds as if someone is using a sampler as a punching bag, but the sporadic surges of harsh digital artifacts and electronic pulses soon begin to exude that aforementioned energy, slowly gaining an inexplicably decipherable cadence in their complex subatomic dance. This feels like something that could have come out on fals.ch back in 2000, but that doesn’t mean what it would for most other music; this sort of tinker-glitch is timeless, so if it sounds fresh it is fresh, and—well, you’ve been reading all of this (I hope), so you already know.
Noise Not Music 