EVEL Records has been on a bit of a spree lately—nonstop drops of leftfield goodness, and this latest one caught me completely off guard in the best way. Gone Pop by Fiesta Soundsystem is a hazy dive into something decidedly experimental. Haven’t heard of this individual before, but that’s kinda the joy of it—new names with strange sounds.

There’s no real rhythmic grounding here, and I think that’s exactly the point. The whole record feels like one of those patch-heavy Max/MSP explorations where randomness is the backbone, and structure’s just a maybe. It’s sample-heavy in places, FX-driven all throughout, and loaded with blurred atmospheres that feel like they’re decaying mid-playback. You’re not gonna get grooves or club edits here—it’s more like tuned chaos with intention.

Even track titles hint at some kinda internal system or file structure:
13-10, 20-09, 05-09, 05-11, etc. Probably versioning, or the number of edits/sources? Feels like this was made out of a folder tree full of reworks and cutups—collaged together but stitched in a weirdly cohesive way.

Tracks 1 through 5 kinda feel like one longform piece, honestly. It’s five separate cuts, yeah, but they melt into each other so seamlessly it plays more like a suite. There’s no standout moments per se, but you don’t really need them if you’re into the texture-forward approach. The transitions carry a lot of character—glitch spills, pitchy stutters, subtle phasing artifacts. No grand reveals, just a satisfying morphing flow.

Track 6 is where things pivot. There’s an actual melodic line creeping in midway, not super prominent but enough to shift the energy. FX and percussion get a little sharper here too—like the album takes a breath, then exhales something more structured (but still very not-beaty). And then the closer, Track 7, drags us into murkier territory—a longform closer built on lo-fi drum smears, an ever-present phaser loop that sounds like a downpitched laser shotgun on a slow loop. It’s grimy, kind of spooky, but still restrained. No big climax, just a slow dissolve.

Definitely leaning more experimental ambient than anything else. Not ambient like pads and slow chords, but in that way certain glitch or post-techno records work when they shed their rhythmic spine and just float. Think early Mille Plateaux, a bit of Raster influence maybe, but soaked in Max/MSP unpredictability. No genre box really fits, and that’s the charm.

If you’re into abstract sound design, patch-driven generative stuff, or records that challenge your labeling brain like the EVEL write-up talks about, you’ll get a lot from this. Not background music in the boring sense—more like music that shifts your room’s energy without asking for the aux cord.