The music NYC transplant Jesse Briata crafts as Lockbox conveys a perverse sense of whimsy that at times borders on the uncanny. On “Happy Smiling Shadow,” the third track to be released from the forthcoming Lockbox album for Primordial Void, the listener is placed in a fabricated, digital environment that reverberates glitches and garbled sound bites from across neural networks.
Briata has been releasing “nihilistic club artillery” as Lockbox for over a decade and has spent time living as a drifter across the U.S. midwest. His second release for the outré electronica label Primordial Void, entitled Neo Druid, was borne out of this period of wayfaring abandon. Briata explains that the album was created over stretches of time where he was literally just consumed by music. “I wouldn’t eat or sleep properly. I would live in random peoples houses and bring an OS9 computer and all my hardware and just set up and work on the same track for a week.”
You certainly get a sense of volatility and alienation from listening to Neo Druid. Although there are semblances of structure, Briata extrapolates into the nether-realm of sound design, positioning himself as an outlier within the continuum of contemporary dance music.
Neo Druid will be released August 30 in digital + ltd. cassette format via Primordial Void. Pre-order it here.