SDEM – At Quadrant Park (CD)

SDEM – At Quadrant Park

For the inaugural release on Quadrant Park (a frozen reeds sub-label), SDEM delivers At Quadrant Park: a single-take live recording captured in early 2024 inside an abandoned club space beneath a railway arch in Leeds, performed to an audience of one.

The set finds Tom Knapp refining SDEM’s mutating live language into something raw, kinetic, and exacting. Drawing from early hip hop, 80s drum machine architecture, musique concrète, and the decayed futurism of the Skam-adjacent electronic underground, the recording moves through tactile rhythmic slippage, gestural scrubs, stabs, scratching, sub-heavy pressure, and dystopic ambient passages. Parts snap in and out of alignment, then recombine in real time with a precision that feels mechanical whilst feral.

Issued in an edition of 500 compact discs, each copy features unique artwork by Robert Beatty, with every sleeve forming one individual frame from a short film never meant to be seen in full. Liner notes are provided by Ed Martin, aka edv3ctor, the sole witness to the recording, and the audio was mastered by Jim O’Rourke at Steamroom.

Tracklisting

• 1. a
• 2. b
• 3. c
• 4. d
• 5. e
• 6. f
• 7. g
• 8. h
• 9. i
• 10. j
• 11. k

RIYL: Autechre, Gescom, Skam Records, musique concrète, early hip hop, turntablism, drum-machines, electronics, sub-heavy experimental beatwork

Format: CD
Genre: Electronic / Experimental / Abstract
Label: Quadrant Park
Country: UK / Finland
Year: 2025