Members of the Primus & Les Claypool universe have linked up to form a new trio, Sound Cipher, and are streaming a new track called "Grid Incursion," which you can check out just below. The band features Primus drummer Tim Alexander, saxophonist Skerik (Critters Buggin, Les Claypool's Fearless Frog Brigade), and synths/bassist Timm Mason.
Sound Cipher will be dropping their debut EP, All That Syncs Must Diverge, on April 21 via the incredible Woodstock, NY-based record label Royal Potato Family, home to keyboard virtuosso Marco Benevento and fellow Frog Brigade and Punkadelick percussionist Mike Dillon. A pre-order for the album is available here.
A press release explained how "the first official Sound Cipher excursion was scheduled for January 2, 2017 at Studio Litho in Seattle," and that "Timm Mason initially came aboard to assist with modular synth processing during this first session, generally a technical advisory role involving lab coats and clipboards and chin-scratching." An additional session took place in 2018 at Avast Studios, also in Seattle.
As for Sound Cipher's sound, "Listeners and innocent bystanders have reported spiritual resemblances to the experimental German scene of the 70s with traces of Can, Faust, Neu and early Kraftwerk, the dark manic rumble of Peter Gabriel‘s early work and the complex digital hardcore first birthed by Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, all of it wrapped in an unsettling atmosphere that verily reeks of familiar ingredients: a tumbling machine-tight groove, a wash of analog synths direct from your midnight movie memories, a snippet from your grandpa’s old Louis Armstrong records stretched across miles of fizzling voltage and contorted into barely recognizable and altogether quite mind-altering new shapes."
For more information on Sound Cipher, visit the Royal Potato Family today.
