Bryce Hackford’s “Aging Language,” a selection off his new record Sampler, the inaugural release on his nascent label CNS, consists of one thing: sustained, dissonant note clusters on a single synthesizer, perhaps a Juno-60 (it does have six-voice polyphony, so the limited range of the clusters would make sense) with some light phasing or flanging and a medium-speed, square-wave LFO modulating the amplitude, giving a hard edged tremolo effect.

But enough of that—I assume only rabid synth dorks will give a shit about the technical minutiae of the piece. But the fact that I’m able to do that is an important consequence of the piece’s compositional constraints: mainly that it and the other tracks on the record were composed live “with very little post-production” on “sensitive instruments,” Hackford says, uncluttered by too much studio magic or virtuosity. The simple, repetitive texture feels foreboding similar to early M.B./Broken Flag while also giving your favorite dungeon synth record, sans the corny lore. Pleasing!