WORKTAPES, by SDEM

WORKTAPES

by SDEM

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.

£8.08 GBP or more
Full Digital Discography

19

releases

Get all 19 SDEM releases available on Bandcamp and save 30%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of infrastructure space tracks, Habitat 67, Liveness 2008-2012, 3yNL, LUT, STEM, WORKTAPES, RAG ORDER, and 11 more. , and , .

Purchasable with gift card

£62.49 GBP or more (30% OFF)
Limited edition Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album
pro duplicated cassette edition - 50 copies only !

Includes unlimited streaming of WORKTAPES via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.

Sold Out

1.	COLD GL 03:06	buy track
2.	18.5.22 06:04	buy track
3.	ZIRK2 02:52	buy track
4.	QTRO 06:24	buy track
5.	ES19 10:08	buy track
6.	SKYWAVE 06:00	buy track
7.	THERMO FADE 03:31	buy track

about

boomkat.com Product Review:

Tom Knapp aka SDEM follows last year’s excellent ‘Vortices’ album with a first physical edition of 2022’s WORKTAPES, a mesmerising 40 minute session of liquid soundscapes, subs and clipped rhythms. Followers of latter-day AE, your time!

There's a penetrating chill to 'WORKTAPES' that feels as if all the air's been sucked out the room. SDEM manipulates his landscape with a keen, well-trained ear: each track sounds as if it's following the same cryptic logic, a sonic topography built around an obsessively defined set of sounds; glassy and expertly sculpted. It's wormlike computer music in the mode of classic Ae in the dark, with weightless half-melodies floating across loping, industrial rhythms.

'18.5.22' revolves around undulating subs, a slow pulsing hip-hop beat and a lattice of wiry synths, while 'ZIRK2' picks up Atlanta's percussive trills, trunk rattling, overdriven 909 kicks and leads, abstracting the elements beyond recognition. A sleazy club banger, stripped for parts.

Knapp's most hypnagogic, long-form tracks retain their momentum too; ‘ES19' is a thick fog of whirring machines and frozen soundscapes, while bass-heavy kicks and skittering percussion keep things moving. 'THERMO FADE', the album's closing track, threatens to collapse at any moment, all wooshed stabs and ghostly synths imposing motion on inert objects, before succumbing to a full noise blow-out.

if yr gonna do this sorta thing, do it this well, or don’t bother eh?

Norman Records :

Deep treading sci-fi b-boy jams from SDEM (Skam / Opal Tapes / CPU / Seagrave). Elliptical funk, hardware rhythm-box clatter and liquid synth matter…many angled variations on themes extruded from recent live work. A 2022 digital-only release now manifests as physical matter, perfectly suited to cassette fidelity.