Athenian producer Kostas Karamitas delves into dark and fearsome territory with his debut Backbone EP; the latest in a bunch of impressive releases from Greek experimental imprint Low Impedance. Working under the production guise of Tokyo Mask, Karamitas’ musical excursions represent something equally formless and frightening, brimming with ominous undertones and brooding sinisterisms. From the first track, Backbone sees Karamitas fashion a visceral, abrasive netherworld of haunting synth phases, industrial-strength beats, nightmarish sonic scapes and drone traversals. But despite his sound’s primal qualities – its grinding power and stinging claustrophobia – a certain penetrable, loose, even strangely ambient aesthetic remains ever-present, with each listen granting a new, slightly tilted perspective. Indeed, while angular and cryptic, dense and paranoid, Tokyo Mask’s lurching, synthetic rhythms and amorphous structures suggest Backbone to be a thing of wonder as much as it is a thing of fear.
Dan Rule
