Konstantinos Karakolis
Konstantinos Karakolis
Groundbreaking bass music trio The Glitch Mob have positioned themselves on the cutting edge of electronic music over the past decade, and for a good reason. The project of producers Boreta, edIT and Ooah, The Glitch Mob have been taking listeners on a series of multi-sensory rides with their past projects, and their latest album Ctrl Alt Reality marks no exception.
Following their 2018 project See Without Eyes, which represented the peak of their signature sound, and a commercial home run alongside the likes of Rituals of Mine, Arama, Tula and Elohim, Ctrl Alt Reality completely flips expectations. As they explained on a number of social media posts, The Glitch Mob took the chance to look inward throughout the pandemic, and their new body of work represents a new chapter for them as artists and visionaries, while calling back to the early days of rave culture in fascinating ways.
A purely instrumental album, Ctrl Alt Reality bridges the gap between The Glitch Mob’s familiar bass-heavy and distorted sound with classic influences from dance music, breakbeats and much more. Led by chaotic and sample-heavy singles such as “The Flavor” and “Antireal,” the album is a masterful journey into underground, dimly-lit and sweaty raves. “Cut Slope” juxtaposes colossal bass stabs with tumultuous snares and rattling percussion, “Depth Charge” continuously evolves from ambient electronica into an amalgamation of vocal samples and uplifting melodies, while “Dream Roller” nicely puts The Glitch Mob’s drum & bass sensibilities on display.
Appeal to nostalgia has started playing a continuously more important role within electronic music over the past years, as evident in some of the genre’s most established artists revisiting some of their and others’ past hits with redos and interpolations. Ctrl Alt Reality pushes far beyond that, however. While it does find The Glitch Mob reconnecting with their past influences and the early sounds of electronic music as a whole, it ambitiously looks toward the future, and ushers in a bright, new era for the pioneering trio.
Listen to Ctrl Alt Reality below: