07:48.
nu::mania

10 TRACKS (37:27) // 13/09/2024


Who wants a breaks album? I do.

07:48. is a dissociative, alien, experimental blend of the familiar and the foreign, offering the frankly saturated modern breaks/ambient DnB genre a much needed refresh in aesthetics and performance.


I found this album while sifting through a friend’s Bandcamp profile. The cover drew me in well: it’s got this beautiful shot, love the framing around the photo, big fan of the wordmark. “Such a style!” - I thought. “I need to see if they’ve got any other socials I can support.”
Nothing. No Spotify, no SoundCloud, no YouTube, nothing on Google. Got hit with a NullpoMino GitHub issue as the first search result. Oh, and no other works on the Bandcamp. I think this absolutely bizarre release situation sets the mood very well: it’s like an elusive artifact of sorts, maybe something you were never meant to see, and won’t see ever again.


Trusty breaks and lush pads make up the musical canvas. The palette of experimentation incorporates creative delays, timestretching, flanging, tonal stuttering, and all sorts of rhythmic debauchery. Despite the general aesthetics revolving around dissociative, warpy, ambient moods, the record is not afraid to lose all restraint in a heartbeat, not just by injecting grit into otherwise relaxed parts, but also by going fully dissonant and atonal, stripping the track bare so that nothing stands in the way of raw power - the sudden speed-up in the last third of “29/3” took me out so hard, and it just goes back to scheduled programming afterwards. Such a memorable set piece.
As a whole, the album is chock-full of such bits: the unique metallic, glass-like percussion elements in “glass cracks under the pillow.” get so much time to shine; I love the near-minimalist approach of the track. The dynamic range present over the course of “date::unknown.”, transitioning from spacious ambience to extreme distortion, is like a bundle of two tracks in one. The very scarce presence of vocal samples makes each usage stick out that much more.
The heart of the album lies within space and progression; the aforementioned moments stand out all the more when given room to breathe. And more than anything, that’s what I love to see in a popular genre like this. Something happening, something changing, something that demonstrates artistic intent. It’s the inaudible tree of branching arrangement decisions that truly makes up a great track in a time when anybody can download the Rhythm-Lab Amen Breaks pack and spit breaks over a Sample Focus loop for approximately 2 minutes.


… Of course, arrangement isn’t everything: I’m not 100% a fan of the overly gritty segments in the music yet.
Particularly, “less.” stands out as less enjoyable of a listen compared to the rest of the record. I think it’s more due to the fact that nothing truly happens for over half the 2-minute runtime, rather than tube distortion proving itself to be too unpleasant. Yes, you do need more taste to make these breaks sound great as opposed to good, but the various switch-ups near the end of the song prove this could’ve been much cooler. I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was the quickest track to finish in production, maybe barring the ambient cut. I think the climax of “date::unknown.” suffers from a similar issue of being harsh with no real backbone.
“less.” stands as an example of lacking movement. Meanwhile, “layer of grief.” arguably moves a little too much. Well, the melodies do. I absolutely applaud the effort in trying to bizarro-style, Aphex Twin-channeling synthesized compositions, but it didn’t quite work out right this time. The first minute was pretty sweet, though.
I’m also not sure if the final track, “just you and me.” really felt like a “final track”, per se. It doesn’t trail off with a whimper, nor does it end with a bang. It feels like it’d be closer to track number 4 than 10. The non-finality isn’t only observed at the macro scale: the outro is very unwieldy even as a standalone song.
Not too many of the criticisms I may have really take away much from the final verdict, or from what the record stands for. (people just cherrypick tracks off albums anyway)


I’d imagine 07:48. to be an album you’d come back to once every few months, prompted by a faint memory, to smile listening to it again. Then again. Then again.
If you are to take away a keyword from this album, it should 100% be “progression”. If you’re a producer in any capacity, I implore you to give your tracks room to evolve and to flourish; to develop and to prosper. Perhaps you haven’t tried to get deep into automation yet, or haven’t been using transitional effects like fallers, risers and reverbs. Perhaps you’ve gotten pretty comfortable with your track workflow… too comfortable. Whatever the case: try things, maybe these songs can inspire you.


FAVORITES:

  • glass cracks under the pillow.
  • 29/3.
  • portable state v.
  • 86 nails were thrown into your eyes.