In a series of tweets last month, EDM superstar Joel Zimmerman all but disowned his eighth album, calling it “rushed” and “slapped together”. “I don’t even like it,” he claimed, adding that he is only releasing it to pay the bills. There were two tracks he reserved praise for, however: Whelk Then, a strange experimental offering that wavers between bursts of clangy syncopation and the ASMR-y sound of dripping water; and Snowcone, which mixes plunderphonic aesthetics with a chunky trip-hop beat.
Both are diverting on their own, but slightly confusing as part of an album that skirts all over the shop, genre-wise, covering trance-house fusion, bleeping 80s electro and seemingly everything in between. It’s possible that it was this lack of focus that led Zimmerman to feel dissatisfied with his work – but he shouldn’t really. This might be far from a perfect album, but it’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
