From the outset, it’s pretty obvious that this second album on Sublight from New York State-based IDM / breakcore producer Wisp (real name Reid Dunn) isn’t going to be your run of the mill listening experience. First off, there’s the remarkably Saxon-looking medieval heraldry of the cover art, followed by the inclusion of nothing less than a J.R.R. Tolkien quote on the inner sleeve. A quick glance at Wisp’s Myspace page reveals a bio with the opening line “Reidandantilus used an amulet named the Bloodstone and a complex spell to drain the life and soul of apprentice mages.” At this point, I wasn’t sure if “Honor Beats’ was going to be a conceptual D&D-related breakcore album (surely a first), but after a few listens, it’s turned out to be one of the most dreamy and wide-eyed exercises in speedy BPMs I’ve heard this year.
Opening track “Beadumaegen’ certainly carries a medieval feel to it, the deep baritone howl of hunting horns giving way to massed pipes and drums. From there the BPMs gradually wind up before things crash into clattering breakcore rhythms, the massed bagpipes clinging tightly to the breakbeats as the reintroduction of distant horns adds just the right degree of eerieness. While many other breakcore producers use unconventional instrumentation to tweak the humour factor, what’s apparent here is the sincerity of Dunn’s approach. By using the collision of massed breakbeats and epic tones to create an atmosphere similar to the wide open sky over a battlefield, he’s also managed to contour and smooth down many of the harsher rhythmic textures, resulting in a breakcore record that comes across as one of the sweeter pills amongst the genre in recent memory.
