Milwaukee ambient electronic producer He Can Jog—AKA Erik Schoster, also of the projects Geodes and Cedar AV—has kept a fairly low profile for the last year or two, but he’s continued recording at his usual deliberate pace, and he ended 2018 by sharing a pair of new pieces to his Bandcamp page.
Of the two compositions, “it’s /a / hoot / to / mix / and /match” is the more accessible and immediate, an 18-minute pastiche of bright sounds and radiant glitch that features some guest rapping from Safari Al. Schoster writes that he pieced the tracks together from “itinerant scraps” of recordings from between 2015 and 2018, but they’re edited together with purpose.
“There's Nothing They Won't Do To Raise The Standard Of Boredom,” meanwhile, asks quite a bit from the listener. It’s a two-hour slow roll that lays low and goes dormant for long stretches, and doesn’t even really break open until the hour mark, though from there it takes some wild, almost surreal, Too Many Cooks-style twists and turns. It rewards the time investment, even as it understands that it’s asking for more buy-in than most listeners are willing to give.
For fans of experimental electronic music that writes its own rules, though, both pieces are very much worth checking out. You can stream them below.
