AOTW | 19 February – 25 February: Qebaxugon – ��▀̿▀̿▀̿ �☐ � ☐� ▀̿▀̿▀̿��
Hardvapour is notable for its incorporation of industrial and noise music into techno beats. For most artists and albums, the “noise” stops at static overlays or significant distortion. Qebaxugon, on the other hand, did not. ��▀̿▀̿▀̿ �☐ � ☐� ▀̿▀̿▀̿�� (and no, your browser didn’t die – that’s the name of the album) is a noise release to the fullest extent of the phrase, but with a bit of the attitude and compositional tropes associated with hardvapour. It came out on the HVRF label, which advertised it as an “alien transmission” – which might be why ASCII text utterly fails to interpret the transmission into something resembling words or symbols other than black bars and diamonds. To quote the album article, ��▀̿▀̿▀̿ �☐ � ☐� ▀̿▀̿▀̿�� is something of an example of the logical extreme of hardvapour as a source of “hardness”, where the idea of truly punishing music finds itself outside of the Eastern European end-of-the-world raves and existing among the fallout.
Read the Sunbleach article here, and listen to the music below: