So not to complicate things, Albert Redwine, more commonly known by his moniker Ultrademon, likens his music to “Dark nights, dusky maidens, future raves, full moon beach parties, desert stars, vine hung horizons, industrial wastelands, cyberspace DJs, mecha demon magic, ethnobotanical basslines, dark crystal messiahs, teen anime love stories, stinging auras, fungal fantasy house, nautical elves, and voidic charms”. Despite sounding like the opening paragraph to the 2015 edition of ‘The Big Book of Band Names’, it takes little more than a quick scan through his Soundcloud to see that, actually, that’s pretty accurate. You certainly couldn’t describe it as anything else.
Redwine was once famed as ‘That guy that invented Seapunk‘, however with his debut LP put out on Aphex Twin‘s label and the release of his critically acclaimed album, ‘Voidic Charms’, he is now acknowledged as the creator of seriously well produced, hyperactive, glitchy, semi-apocalyptic electronic music.
This latest track, ‘Demon’, is lifted from ‘Pirate Utopias‘, Ultrademon‘s third album. The record is inspired by The Temporary Autonomous Zone, a book by anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey that explores preserving the creativity, energy and enthusiasm of revolution without replicating the betrayal and violence that joins it.
Both the track and the video act as perfect examples of his unapologetic style and refusal to be pigeonholed; partly because comparisons can be drawn from grime, hard house, jungle, video game samples, acid and even UK funky. Crammed with surprising yet totally pleasing melodical U-turns, Demon, even after the third or fourth listen, offers up something you hadn’t quite caught the last time around.
The accompanying video follows someones desperate quest for water in what appears to be some kind of ‘The Hills Have Eyes‘ worthy nuclear testing range. Much the like the track, it’s bizarre but it’s also completely captivating. Watch it in full below.
Click here to purchase Pirate Utopias on iTunes.
Words by Maya Radcliffe