Kodomo – Patterns & Light (Kodomo)

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Kodomo

Brooklyn-based electronic producer Chris Child has a day job as an Emmy Award winning music composer for TV and computer games, but over the last seven or so years he’s also been releasing music of a distinctly IDM-tinged flavour as Kodomo. Three years on from his preceding ‘Frozen In Motion’ collection, this third self-released album ‘Patterns & Lights’ sees Child continuing to build glacially elegant and rhythmically detailed arrangements, though there’s a discernibly dancefloor-centring aesthetic lurking beneath many of the twelve tracks gathered here that sees him drawing from breaks and dubstep influences.

‘Impromptu’ certainly wears its early Warp Records influences openly on its sleeve (particularly Plaid / The Black Dog), but in this case the signature percussive melodic patterns and coldly clicking electro rhythms are underpinned with an additional sense of growling bass elasticity that feels closer to grime’s edged shuffle than anything else, particular as the vaguely rave-y synths begin to zap back and forth. ‘Red Giant’s meanwhile offers up a furious ride through Squarepusher-esque junglist breakbeats and coldly elegant synth arrangements that sees the entire track breaking down to just an angelic chorale solo vocal at one point, before ‘Blue Shifter’ injects a ghostly Brazilian vibe into proceedings, as feathery guitar strokes glide over a backdrop of sharp edged two-step rhythms, the tumbling marimba percussion that tinkles away in the background giving everything a tensely urgent atmosphere. While it often isn’t too hard to pick the influences at work, there aren’t that many producers that do the post-IDM thing quite as well as Child does here.

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A dastardly man with too much music and too little time on his hands

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