Dark Garden, the new album of thrillingly idiosyncratic analog buzz by Nerve Net Noise (aka: homemade synth duo Hiroshi Kumakiri and Tagomago), is the perfect entry-point for listeners new to their singular sonic world. Where previous albums have explored a single sonic idea at a time, Dark Garden is their most varied and (relatively) accessible album yet. Which is not to say that it won’t cause heads to turn everywhere this is played in public. Dark Garden is an album of short, song-like synthesizer pieces, taking cues from manga, science fiction, early electronic music, and minimal techno… but as always, the Tokyo band resides firmly in their own inexplicable universe. It assimilates fractured beats, bubbling pulses, and impatient drones into an album that’s somehow both playfully alive and coldly menacing. In his liner notes, synth builder Kumakiri describes spirits that lurk in the shadows and watch people go about their lives, existing in a parallel world that brings to mind fairy tales and myth. Nerve Net Noise’s music is similarly just out of reach, present in the natural world but not quite a part of it. For fans of Klaus Schultze, Jessica Rylan, Henri Pousseur, or Pan Sonic… $12ppd US $14ppd world Praise for Dark Garden: "...playful electronic exchanges that squeak, growl, giggle and bleep, and then transform into the cartoonish garble of an unfathomable arcade game or a surreal monster manga animation. The fleeting pieces that form Dark Garden remain tantalisingly out of reach and hard to pin down, their constantlt shifting shapes refusing to conform to a fixed rhythmic pattern or set of musical rules. The result is a carefully chaotic collection of ephemeral tracks that flitter, explode, fade and delight." - The Wire "Harrowingly minimalist at times and spatial; tones meld with clicks and pops as jagged crackles twist into pulsing drones. Created as a meditation on the darkness within and outside us, Hiroshi Kumakiri and Tagomago have culled the depths of pop culture and even the shadows of the spirit world for inspiration to issue eleven palettes of surreal tessellations and hallucinatory miasma that move like fragments from a lost science-fiction soundtrack. This is not a noise record, far from it. Another outstanding release from Intransitive. Recommended! 8/10" - Foxy Digitalis "... just how exactly these guys conjure up such deep, seemingly simple patterns & analogue void-shapes is beyond my comprehension (and i have a degree in music synthesis !!!)" - Keith Fullerton Whitman, Mimaroglu Music Sales "It sounds very analogue in approach, very dry. Clicky rhythms, deep bass sounds, that sort of thing, and in some pieces indeed inspired by the dance rhythms of techno, but this is hardly music to dance to. Head nod music at it's best for some of the pieces, but at other times even stranger than nodding your head and a bit unnerving. A bit of very raw Pan Sonic or Goem with whom they share a love of all things analogue. Strong production - very clear, very loud and bass heavy. I think because it's more musical than much of their previous work, this is their best release so far." - Vital Weekly