CD, SillonS, 2005
www.sillons.org
Cyclyk is glitch for very hardened glitch enthusiasts. If you are interested in glitch and are just starting to research this sort of music, don’t start with this CD. It’s not truly terrible, but it is extremely difficult to get into. It has some surprising highlights in the tracks “Sand”, “Suspend” and “Elios”, but the rest is unstructured in sound and lacking in melody (as all good glitch should be!). Personally, I like melody. Sweeping sounds, samples, all of that. Clicks and random bleeps are generally not something that does it for me. Musicians may understand as they can probably figure out what package they used to create on! (I’ve seen this happen!).
The CD starts with ‘Ondine’, which is not the best start in the world as it is literally just random clicks and bleeps and not much else. “Sand” follows and that is a stand out track as it has a minimalist melody, but it certainly gives it that little bit extra. ‘La Male’ goes back into glitch territory again, but then goes into “Suspend” where melody is used beautifully. It seems the tracks skip from glitch to electronica. “Memento Mori” is not recommended for headphones, far too many high pitched squeaks and noises going on, but then back into something a little more soothing on the ears in the form of “Elios”.
This release has given me some mixed feelings. It’s a CD of two different sides entirely. Half is good and half is bad. They may have been better off releasing a double CD with their more electronica sounds on one CD and one CD dedicated to glitch. There is some talent evident, certainly, but it’s too mixed up. Future releases may be better if they pursue the electronica sound rather than glitch.
[4/10]
— Kate Turgoose