Stripped

CD pressing. Originally released digitally in 2014, Stripped is the latest full-length by Gabriel Le Mar. Stripped reveals a veritable jungle of masterful mastodonian beat madness of a type not seen in electronic circles for decades. At once gleefully and respectfully signifying the engaging 90s era of IDM while simultaneously pointing into a far more cybernetic aural future, Stripped is hardly that; it's somewhat more 'streamlined' than Le Mar's early works, but that hardly diminishes it's brilliant, complex, and magnetic sound design, where the listener's attention is so engaged one must literally react to the rhythm. Stripped might well be one of the more disingenuously-titled albums in electronica. The descriptor is easily betrayed by Le Mar's characteristic liquid squelch, digital snap and pop, and the sheer miasmic surface tension of the entire enterprise. And the better we listeners are for it.