Photo by Leo Reilly

Nick Sylvester is a name who has popped up many, many times across these pages since its very nascent beginnings. As the founder of the eclectic, Brooklyn-based experimental boutique label, Godmode Music, producer for artists such as Yaeji, Channel Tres, YVETTE, and more recently, Sarah Register and ISOLA, studio protégé of LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, and former drummer of the dearly departed grungy noise rockers, Mr. Dream, Sylvester has stood out over the last decade-plus as a singular sound-shaper in a world where we could stand to hear more challenges to the norms.

It’s taken him a minute, but he’s finally readying to release his debut album, a collection of experimental electronic noise compositions entitled Stereo Music for Breakbeats and Samplers, where the premise “takes the breakbeat to its breaking point” beyond the usual terrains of rap, house, garage, drum & bass, drill & bass. He’s introduced the effort with three aurally fascinating early previews, with the elastic, sputtering regurgitation and percolating synthesis of modular sounds on “Ziggy” and “Philly Joe” being two of them. On the album’s focal highlight, “Jaki”, our ears bare witness to something both pleasant and violent in short order. This is is an astute synopsis for Sylvester’s creative dichotomy in considering his “smart dumb” approach in composing pop architectures but also, deconstructing them down to their heavier, noisiest particle matter. Without losing that tiniest hint of an earworm within his framework, he still manages to pull off the remarkable in turning the switch on with your senses in the most unassuming way. And then disintegrating them altogether.

Nick Sylvester’s Stereo Music for Breakbeats and Samplers will be released July 22nd on Smartdumb.