Last year’s Entangled saw SØS Gunver Ryberg straddling the frontier between techno and noise. The release marked her expansion from transcendent noisemaker to something more rounded, incorporating melody and moments of yawning space. Ryberg's music was both more complex and accessible than ever. Her latest release, Whities 030, sees an even more comprehensive engagment with this mode. Intended to explore “the connection between destruction and creation”, Ryberg makes a graceful arc from order into chaos and dissolution, before hoiking us back by the end.
Opener ‘In The Core’ expands and compresses like a biomechanical lung. Its title and timbre suggest a gaping cavern with oil-slicked and artificial walls. Ryberg has soundtracked projects in the past (most famously for Playdead’s platform game Inside), but it’s still surprising just how visual her work can feel. Synthwork on Whities 030 feels in the tradition of 1980s horror maestros. Its sound carries video-nasty nostalgia, and a tension which suggests things may explode into violence at any second.
‘Solar Flare’ is even more oppressive; doused by foggy, thunderous washes of bass. A bright melodic lead eventually swoops in to puncture holes in the texture, but is itself doomy and heavy-legged. The air thickens, and path darkens, the track’s voice is fortified but forbidden to form words. By the end of ‘Solar Flare’, structure is so oblique as to seem absent.
Ryberg runs with this obliqueness in ‘Mirage of Spiral Wavelengths’. We experience further dismantlement and disintegration. To paraphrase Daniel Lopatin, we could be seeing the last known image of a song. Limping and injured, hissing steam from its fissures, the track stutters slowly through a post-apocalypse. Comprising dissolute, fragmentary elements, ‘Mirage…’ is just that—a mirage. Warping in heat haze, the track disappears before our eyes, and eludes understanding. But that makes it no less enticing.
‘Flux’ sees the return of the arrhythmic beats last heard in ‘In The Core’. It consequently can’t help but feel like some kind of return to baseline. With that said, we still walk in disordered territory. Ryberg’s drums are like Autechre procedural generations attempted on a decaying punch-card computer. They grab impotently for coherence but instead abandon to decay. The effect is unique and captivating. ‘Flux’ not only impresses on a visceral level, but is a technical stumper, too. It’s true: any sufficiently advanced music production is indistinguishable from magic.
Given its predecessors, ‘Velvet Dome Of Becoming’ is a curious closer. It’s anchored by a gorgeous drone—what sounds like the best didgeridoo simulation since Richard D. James went by ‘The’ Aphex Twin—and has one foot planted in a verdant organic world. After the toil of this depressive set of tracks, it’s a welcome surprise to end with contemplation, mystery and hope.
Those who recognise SØS Gunver Ryberg’s name won’t need a recommendation for Whities 030. They will already know her as an artist in a state of constant exploration—of sound, of the self, and world that huddles around our bodies. Her every release is outstanding in quality. Each builds on, and often subverts, what came before. Whities 030 does nothing to buck the trend, and reaffirms Ryberg as one of the best producers about. This is another worthy addition to her tremendous catalogue.
Whities 030 is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe