Bucharest, Romania-based electronic producer Yvat currently runs his own professional sound design company, a day job he’s managed to balance against a seriously prolific work rate in recent years. After first emerging in 2004 with his debut ‘Analog Orchestra’ album on UK label Experimental Seafood Records, Yvat’s gone on to release a dizzying amount of 3” CD releases, collaborative DVDs alongside Romanian art designers Alex Popescu and Paul Dersidan, and no less than three albums under his parallel Robotii Nu Se Pot Ruga alias alongside Justin Wiggan. This latest album ‘Gliae’ follows on from 2006′s ‘Chroma’, Yvat’s first album for Israeli label +g6pd and sees him picking up from the stylistic threads laid down by that preceding record, particularly its increasing shift towards more rhythmically complex contemporary IDM influences. While opening track ‘Crus’ at first suggests a glitch-hop flavoured journey ahead with its fusion of crunching headnod IDM beats and refracted-sounding phased synth pads, many of the tracks that follow such as the vaguely electro-funk tinged ‘Tactum’ and ‘Caudate’ call to mind more ‘Tri Repetae’-era Autechre, the main focus being percussive reverberation as melodic tones tumble gamelan-like beneath a rattling backdrop of contorted IDM rhythms. While there are certainly immediate comparisons to be made with classic era Warp Records here however, in this case it’s Yvat’s immense attention to production detail and the sheer sense of icily cerebral atmosphere atmosphere generated here that places ‘Gliae’ miles ahead of most of the other IDM soundalikes. It also comes with some of the classiest packaging I’ve seen in a while, the CDR being held between two engraved plates of tough as hell translucent Stiplex plastic.
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