Idle Hours

It would be hard to find a better example of Tri Angle's most abrasive, challenging side than Boothroyd's Idle Hours EP. Made with cheap gear for an intentionally brittle, hissy sound, the producer's debut for the label overflows with chopped-up, ultra-compressed, and saturated noise. Boothroyd bookends the EP with its most aggressive tracks: though "NYC" boasts a delicately plucked melody reminiscent of labelmate Forest Swords, its kick drum dissolves into zeroes and ones at the end of each hit, and melancholy pianos are subsumed by sludgy beats. Later, on "Y5," Boothroyd trades that track's layered menace for an exercise in texture, dynamics, and structure as ghostly squeals and more crushing beats circle each other in a way that recalls the Haxan Cloak's Excavation. While the fractured "Skinned" and dubstep-tinged "Colony" provide slight breathers, they cover — and destroy — nearly as much sonic ground as the more intense tracks. A solid debut, Idle Hours shows Boothroyd is right at home on Tri Angle and suggests he has even more to offer, especially since he was barely in his twenties when he recorded it. [Idle Hours was also released on LP.]