In the realm of electronic music’s expansive universe, Sangre Voss and Will Hofbauer‘s collaborative project and label whirm emerges as a delightfully off-kilter celestial entity. Their six-track odyssey is proof to the duo’s penchant for bringing playfulness and personal authenticity to their one-of-a-kind sound-design.
The label’s sixth and final track emerges as a meta-musical Frankenstein, ingeniously assembled from the DNA of its predecessors. Jim Bremner (Sangre Voss) cleverly embedded noise arrays generated in Python into each stem of the final song, creating an aural breadcrumb trail. Each release is accompanied by a track that initially masquerades as mere white noise.
However, upon stacking each white noise from each release atop each other in an audio editor, the noise stems all result in their sixth track. This way of releasing each track not only caps the collection but also challenges conventional notions of authorship. As Jim conveys this concept with his words, “music is but noise dancing in elegant synchrony.”
The artwork of each release provides a visual aesthetic that emerges as a maximalist collage, born from Jim’s encounter with La Princessa Maria during travels in Colombia. The artwork beautifully provides companionship to their productions, creating a conceptual synesthesia-adjacent experience that translates auditory rhythms into a kaleidoscopic colour palette.
"The artwork beautifully provides companionship to their productions, creating a conceptual synesthesia-adjacent experience that translates auditory rhythms into a kaleidoscopic colour palette."
Each artwork frames itself like a portal into the duo’s meticulously crafted universe—a genre-defying landscape that seamlessly blends leftfield experimentalism with UK bass undertones. The artwork not only enhances the listening experience but also serves as an integral part of their creative expression, while inviting listeners to engage with the music on a deeper level.
Their tracks, adorned with tongue-in-cheek titles, inject a refreshing dose of levity into the often-somber world of electronic music. Much of the UK bass, broken, and leftfield genres oscillate between intense, trance-inducing euphoria and serious ambient explorations. Will and Jim carve out a unique space in between, expanding the emotional palette of the genre towards a lighter spectrum.
Despite their sample-focused playful approach, they craft intricate arrangements that defy gimmickry, striking a delicate balance that avoids becoming mere novelty while still maintaining whimsical creativity. The result is a body of work that is as technically impressive as it is entertaining, where complexity and humour coexist in perfect harmony.
Each track (so far) on whirm is a magnet to the Room 2 area of a club where musical boundaries dissipate into a collective movement of unified joy of wonky, experimental sounds. Their compositions demand active listening, combining unpredictable elements that surge and retreat like rhythmic waves. The unpredictability becomes the arrangement itself, with each unexpected twists and textural shifts.
whirm’s debut track “UKA” feels tribal with elements of UKG breaks, resulting in an unconventional rhythm. A Bandcamp reviewer aptly described it as sounding “like a drawer being slammed open and shut”, a characterisation that perfectly captures the track’s DIY sounding charm and percussive ingenuity. The samples used within the production certainly evoke a playful, impromptu jam session before seamlessly evolving into a full-fledged dance tune. This club-ready banger showcases a tasteful synergy between the two producers.
"Their compositions demand active listening, combining unpredictable elements that surge and retreat like rhythmic waves. The unpredictability becomes the arrangement itself, with each unexpected twists and textural shifts."
“Sema Clematis” shows Will and Jim’s answer to a leftfield experimental approach to layering samples to channel the essence of dubby jungle breaks without explicitly sampling such. As Jim explains, “I think it was layered and screwed up from all sorts of things. Will say that it was probably subconsciously channeling something jungle though even if it didn’t explicitly sample a jungle break”.
The track opens with a purr-like, rapid percussion, building tension with cymbal crashes before erupting into an intensifying rhythmic structure reminiscent of jungle breaks. Beginning with a deceptively quiet and eerie, “Sema Clematis” gradually erupts into darker, more complex tones. This progression highlights the duo’s ability to manipulate sound into textures and rhythms that derives influences from other subsets of electronic music to create distinct compositions.
“Ageless Trout and the Chaos of the Salmon” serves as the crowning jewel in whirm’s 2024 catalog, a fitting finale that seamlessly blends elements from their previous releases into a cohesive whole. The track’s title originates from the infamous “Salmon Chaos” phenomenon in Taiwan, where hundreds of people changed their names to include “salmon” for free sushi, infusing the composition with a sense of aquatic urgency and surreal anticipation. This final release from the two producers ties together the essence of their collaborative project.
The production is a bubbling cauldron of sound, featuring broken shakes, crisp cymbals, and cleverly delayed samples that create water-y textures throughout. Each element combines to evoke the frenzied atmosphere of the namesake event, where the absurd met the bureaucratic in a spectacle. In transforming this cultural oddity into an incredibly catchy audio form, “Ageless Trout and the Chaos of the Salmon” rounds off whirm’s impressive run of releases.
The label shows the breadth in musical expression that can exist in the realms of irony. Will and Jim have both forged a distinctive “sound-stamp” or production identity with these six releases. By injecting a precise dose of stochastic elements into familiar electronic themes, the duo keeps listeners perpetually on edge, amused, and deeply invested in their endeavours. This label is a refreshing antidote to the genre’s often po-faced seriousness, injecting a much-needed dose of lightness into our dancefloors.
