Noumen - Altum

Noumen returns to Central Processing Unit after a six-year absence with Altum. This bumper record, the Ukrainian artist's fourth release for the Sheffield label and first since 2019 double-LP Obscurium, serves to remind us all why Noumen's music has been lauded by the likes of Mixmag and Resident Advisor in the past. Altum is a consummate piece of contemporary electronic production, a technoid exploration of outer-edges electronica that nods to genre greats like Autechre while still maintaining its own unconventional charm. Across well over an hour of music here we find Noumen repeatedly playing punchy mid-tempo beat work off of some more cerebral tuned synths. Altum kicks off with the epic 'Oion' - beginning in that Autechre/AFX mid-tempo zone, full of deep-sea bangs and whirrs, the track slowly builds to a final stretch of delay-drenched keys which set us free amidst the outer cosmos, almost Sun Ra-style. It's a perfect liminal-space roller and an apt scene-setter for Altum.

'Oion' provides a blueprint for several of the album's other highlights - plenty of the joints here adopt that same approach of hitting hard with the drums and soft with the synths. Second track 'Splitter' takes on the baton from 'Oion' while souping up the kick to warehouse levels; the beats in 'Far Wind' splutter like a needle skipping on a mid-90s Tresor drop; 'Fate Carette', all eerie looped synth leads, is a highlight as the album enters the home straight. The rhythm production (which, it should be noted, is exemplary throughout Altum) is ratched up in intensity on a handful of numbers. 'Telemask' displays a delightful breakbeat - if you'd told me this was sampled from golden age A Tribe Called Quest, I'd have believed you. Mid-section anchors 'Awe' and 'Axis' are glitchers in the Mike Paradinas mould, with the latter showing off some pleasing steel pan-esque synth leads for good measure. And while Altum generally maintains a processional pace throughout, there are points where Noumen toughens up the drums for club deployment - 'Unveilness' shows off a real chunkiness in the low end, closer 'Spurling Sign' plays a satisfying rolling groove off of ever-layering synths, and the title-track is an alien machine-funker in keeping with fellow CPU electronauts like Silicon Scally and Cygnus. Noumen's third album for Central Processing Unit is a pleasingly hefty double-LP which builds on the zany invention of acts like Modeselektor and Autechre to delightful effect.