Greyscale synths and samples cascade through spiky drumwork on this moody release

MANAPOOL’s music exists within that gloomy, rainy aesthetic found in enigmatic Japanese PS2 games or lesser-known MMORPGs. Her social media shows gig images, thorny anime drawings and game screenshots, or palimpsestic artwork that suggests an exalted sense of emotion and identity. The sorts of things one finds in the dead of night. Alone, save for friends made through screens and avatars. With a great back catalogue, it is in Silent Core: Infinity Construct that one will find this atmosphere captured perfectly.

Though MANAPOOL’s percussive onslaught is incisive and fairly unrelenting – the artist keeps busy playing in her native St. Louis and other US locations – it is the samples and melodies that find their way through a barbed maze of sharp drums that stand out. Whether it’s the vocal sample that blooms through the torrent of Aelid like a flower or the haunting repeated “I Feel Love” in Last Rites (It curses you too).

The latter track does capture how much of an influence video games and wider Asian media has on the artist. The beautiful samples seem to come from a in-game cutscene, dramatic whispered back and forths before we dive into the thundering arpeggiated notes one would usually hear when faced with some unyielding behemoth in a beautiful, early-2000s button masher. Spritely sounds appearing like crystals all over our screen.

But, this isn’t to say that Silent Core exists merely to explore the world of the digital. In fact, it is its intersection with the real that makes the release so deserved of praise. Eric Donte brings a party energy to the slick, cityscape-sounding Scanner-in. It conjures visions of androgynous beings speeding through the night towards a party. Though Donte’s lyrics seem to nod towards biohacking and imagined innovations, the feeling is not dissimilar to that one may find deep in the bowels of a city, if they know where to look.

Midnight Club featuring dazegxd also has that fluid forward motion, as breakbeats weave in and out of gorgeous euphoric notes. It is a simple equation that many DnB artists have been using for decades. Clattering percussion and serene melodies equals a heightened sense of calm. But MANAPOOL achieves something more from the sheer force with which she lands her punches and the bliss she gifts to the listener in the moments when the crystal notes like some dawn’s light pushing through sharp trees and metal.

At points, Silent Core: Infinity Construct sounds like a demo disc from an old Japanese video game magazine. Samples further pushing this feeling of darkness and emotion. But, aside from the implementation of this aesthetic, it has to be stated that the artist is making some of the sharpest hardcore music around. Spiked tendrils of cymbal slash through melody lines, stopping only to allow the deadening thud of a kick drum.