Khate is a tinkering audiophile who writes redemption songs. And no, she's not a bad Bob Marley tribute act who plays every Thursday at that seedy pub down the road. Not to mention, Pareidolia, her debut full-length, doesn't even sound redemptive in its favoring of dark, ambient layers that evoke a steel cold sci-fi landscape. The redemption comes in the composition, by way of her Dr. Frankenstein methodology of taking anything with wires to cross, be them toys, sloughed-off appliances, or vintage synths, and sparking new life into their electric veins (to get a clearer idea of the staggering amount of her creations, see this). She composes from the decomposing.
While this may be her debut on SMTG - a Virginia-based label that's released the works of Xela, Anduin, and Jasper TX - Khate is far from a newbie, as she's been producing her creations for close to a decade. Ten - count them, ten - of her non-label records are available for purchase on her website. With such a roving mind and busy hands, it would be very easy for her to overindulge the music, stuffing it with so much glitch and snap that our brains short-circuit along with the toys she manipulates. But she shows herself as not just a creative mind that is always asking 'what if...', but as a true composer, arranging parts and levels, introducing and rehashing motifs, and even building the occasional dancey beat. Electronic curiosity aside, Khate is through and through an artist.
The album opener, "Additives", begins with what I previously referred to as a sci-fi landscape. Sine waves like laser guns fire amidst a static wind breathing in and out. It is otherworldly and deserving of as many Philip K. Dick descriptions as we're willing to throw out. But there is an element to this track, and every other on the album, that isn't just spacey. Many of these unfamiliar sounds are quite commonplace but take on other planes of existence when their context is reshaped. In "Additives" there is a crunching sound (I've given up trying to pin down the exact source - I don’t think that's the point anyway) that could be the guy in the next cubicle over balling up pieces of paper to chuck in the trash. Or, it could be organic as the sound of dead leaves audibly disintegrating underfoot. This science isn't fictional - rather, some kind of sci-(non)fi that takes us up in a spaceship only so that we'll be able to observe our own space from a critical distance.
Track three, "Autumn", begins with the most pronounced beat on the record so far - the perfect counterpoint to amorphous wandering in the first two pieces. The beeping beat feels crafted from a cardiogram, and, though it is far subtler than other found sound beat-makers like Byetone and Four Tet, it still gives plenty of room for a head-bob. Building on the introduction of rhythm, "Liquid" brings the element of voice closer to the surface, continuing in the patient reveal of the tricks as they unify over the course of each piece. In previous work, Khate has often included snippets from shortwave radio, giving her work an antiquated, wartime texture, and she continues with that fascination within the most playful track on the album. Yet within romping beats and fluid sample, the repetitive crackling delivery of a man saying 'Belgrade, Belgrade, over' carries haunting implications.
The last third of the record, built by the successive tracks, "Tired," "57 Rels," and "Comforting the Meat," brings the themes to their most urgent. In the final minute of "Tired" a whip-like lashing emerges out of the fatigue, growing in volume and forcing our ears to perk up as if they were slaves bending to the will of the master. "57 Rels" is brief, but it includes an unintelligible and delay-drenched sample that creates a fearful wooziness - like trying to wake from a smothering dream. The conclusion of the record is the richest of them all, despite its title, as "Comforting the Meat" is something I'd rather not analyze too deeply. Here, over a cycling sample of Penderecki-like strings, that whip comes back in full force, bringing with it a distorted, aggressive polyrhythm before fading out and leaving with us two minutes of dissonance.
The challenge of this record is attention. While it would be very easy to call it background music, it is anything but. Instead, it has a tendency of coloring, shaping, and morphing with any scene the listener brings it into - whether its the overheard sound of church bells swirling into Khate's frenetic ether or mainstream radio sneaking past headphones while riding the bus. Nothing audible is safe from being gathered up in the shape-shifting, sonic stormcloud that Pareidolia beckons to itself.
-Bryan Parys