Diskette Park – Radiant Covenant
Radiant Covenant
Diskette Park
Album
Signalwave
Liam Murphy
November 20, 2024
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June 1, 2023
Tracks in this feature
Tracks in this release
Reaching out like a helping hand for those that may not have heard of independent electronic music mainstay Petridisch before, Extrait's opener A Night Chorale can be seen as partway indicative of much of the artist’s unique output as a whole. Though the melody being played has all the foreboding and gloom of a dark classical rendition, the vessels through which it is communicated ultimately fail to support its resemblance to some harbinger of doom. At times unnerving, the sampled voices do give off a strange air, but it also feels as though – through sudden jerks upwards in pitch and an overall vocal flatness – the artist is being slightly caustic. Such is a fair amount of Petridisch’s output, in which he combines knowledge of musical composition with organs and synths sometimes only recognisable on releases from back past the millennium, creating special tracks and releases that are quaintly stilted but nonchalant in their humour.
Take _Flaounes_ as a shining example of Petridisch at his most silly. With audio from UK show Great British Bake Off, the track is an ode to the Cypriot bread from which it derives its title. The artist obsesses over the caricatured delivery of the dish’s name, inputting it rhythmically throughout the track. A comfy serving of primetime British easy-watching is transformed into a strange, semi-austere venture – this being completely owed to the instrumentation. Searching synths swirl around behind the samples, tones of worry and concern warping the clip into something strange and alien. Petridisch’s choice to repeat the pronunciation though, adds another level of humour to the proceedings and the listener is forced to listen with one eyebrow raised. Is this track a serious censure of narrow-minded understandings of foreign foods, pronunciations and even cultures, or just a fun, carefree meander in which a person says “Flauones” over and over again?
Elsewhere, Petridisch’s close chord sequences momentarily take on a bling era sound on To Get to the Other Side with proud drum machine bashing before settling in with organ undulations. The more the track plays out, the more the listener can appreciate how Petridisch’s style is similar to that digital late-noughties sound. The artist draws attention with the melodic elements, the slow descent of each sequence walking a line between eerie and insensible.
A friend and an avid follower of the vaporwave scene, Petridisch hasn't often strayed too far into what many would recognise is the classic sound of the genre, though Bagpipes - Bananas does offer a taste of it. Murky synth work finally clears into a phasing, swirling catharsis of pitched-down vocals and trippy sibilant cymbals. Though fairly different, the sample does not feel out of place, as listeners of the artist will know that Petridisch’s sound goes where the creative process wills him to.
As we circle back around to eerie voices for the over-15-minute finale, they have become predictably wavering and weak, though supported by fairly uplifting pad chords. The artist reprises a few of the tracks, transitioning between them in a bumpy conclusion rather than working in renditions or refrains in an overarching and solid instrumentation. More about reiterating the purposely uneasy amalgamation of the tracks than giving a large cathartic energy, Petridisch allows the listener to reabsorb the strange and venturesome journey they have been taken on.
In Extrait, the listener is provided with one of the most comprehensive collections of tracks Petridisch has offered. Employing his recognisable style in everything from comedic jaunts to delicately arranged melodic phrases that captivate and offer a feeling of oddness, the artist continues to shirk a uniform sound and wade through a wholesomely unpredictable landscape.
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