2001 Silverbullit - Citizen Bird
Those who consume music primarily for entertainment purposes may not appreciate falling asleep to it. I don't think I've managed to stay awake through the entirety of Stochastic yet, but in this case, that fact contributes to a large part of the decision to name it my favorite album of 2021.
This is not music you are preparing for a party, and few are the parties that Carbon Based Lifeforms' music is a part of. At the same time, I don't know if I would recommend listening to this album when you're in an anxious emotional state, because here we rarely find something safe and rhythmic to cling to. This is a form of music that feels best just by submitting to. To follow where it leads. And if you can let go of preconceived ideas about where the journey will lead and just observe your surroundings, you will eventually become a part of it. In the end, perhaps what initially feels random and unsafe will become obvious and uplifting.
Carbon Based Lifeforms is a duo from Gothenburg, Sweden, that has been around since sometime in the 1990s, and although you can hardly say that the direction of their career ladder has been straight upwards since then, or even that what they create has gone through any revolutionary development phases, you can say that these guys have known what they were doing since their debut in 1998. Now, I'm of course not particularly familiar with what is required of a musician who uses electronic equipment to create their works, but in Carbon Based Lifeforms' case it sounds to my ears as if the knowledge regarding the possibilities and limitations of the equipment has been there since day one. If someone asked me to recommend which CBL album you should start your listening with, I would probably say Interloper, which was released in 2010. It is possibly easier to listen to than Stochastic in that it largely has more tangible arrangements, without compromising on the abstract excesses. Especially in comparison to the mainstream popular music we are usually bombarded with.