Cygnus: Tesseracter (CPU)

More quality, cool as ice electro from the fine ‘heads at the CPU label. Fans of no nonsense electro will feel right at home with Cygnus’s clean, crisp beats and synths. Opener “Escher” sets the tone well before completely steamrolling right into “Video Games” (almost seamlessly, but not quite), echoing shades of Drexciya or DMX Krew. Its dorky vocal reminds me of Gerald Donald (Glass Domain, Dopplereffekt, Japanese Telecomm, etc), especially when paired with its light, bright mid-tempo electro break.

All of it no doubt would have hit all the right spots for me 10-15 years ago when I was first really diving headlong into this sort of stuff, but even still it sounds good to me, if a bit predictable by virtue of how loyal it is to a tried and true electro aesthetic. Because of this, tracks don’t always stand apart from one another as strongly, but there are some personal favorites. “Taarner”’s combo of stabby bass funk, clean drums, and delayed and detuned leads really shines in its minimalism. I really dig the portamento fifths and patterns on “Tau Ceti” and the detuned dry lead of the closing title cut. Fans of minimal electro ought to check it out, especially if interested in aforementioned acts and reference points.

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