DRM

Description

Los Angeles-based sax virtuoso Sam Gendel recorded “DRM” in a single sixteen-hour session and somehow managed to avoid playing his saxophone at all. Instead, he crafted a sequence of fractured electronic homages to pop rap, using the Moby-approved DRM32 drum machine as the spiritual backbone.

Each track uses limited ingredients – wobbly guitar, a vintage Japanese keyboard that mimics the koto, his own vocals – and assembles them into songs that sound like radio R&B and rap, but not really. It’s almost like hearing Drake, Kanye or Brockhampton in a dream: the vocals are almost indecipherable and smoove synthesized chords are detuned into trippy, cartoonish blips and drones.

The album’s centerpoint is the cover of Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ that reduces the world-beating original to a sparsecollection of electronic wobbles, plucked strings and vintage percussion. In many ways it’s the perfect elevator music: lite jazz, but make it deconstructed.