Something has gone awfully askew in the music of Madegg. The 23-year-old producer, real name Kazumichi Komatsu, used to delight in creating warm, shimmering electronica that seemed to come bathed in the lambent glow of a late summer evening.
Compared to the bewitching textures of his 2013 sophomore album, "Kiko," the music on Madegg's third full-length, simply titled "New," isn't merely jarring. There's a lot here that sounds instinctively wrong.
Take the opening track, "Savages," which consists of little but a two-bar loop of distorted synthesizer melody and the barest remnant of a techno beat. All treble, no bass, it's like a snippet of a euphoric dance floor anthem that got left out in the sun for too long.