Patrick Sandermo is a Stockholm-based DJ. He has previously recorded as My Own Sorrow and is a regular on the EDM festival circuit. And while the trunk of these pieces is EDM, Sandermo adds some truly exceptional elements.

Blood Magick Hexikon (self-released)

He describes this as electro-industrial, but the beats are too lightweight to fit the industrial part of the description. The peripheral is where things get interesting. Sandermo runs the vocals that exist through an extreme noise filter, and he adds wash upon wash of noise. The result is something akin to Giorgio Moroder playing black metal.

Sandermo does depart from EDM in a very important way: There is no drop. Just an incessant (and insistent) beat dressed up in a wide array of noise. These propulsive songs are at once airy and loud as fuck. Since there aren't any guitars that I can hear, this doesn't get heavy. But man, is it aggressive.

I imagine that Covid winter in the dark northern reaches of Europe must have felt something like this, a pervasive and ever increasing sense of doom. Blood Magick has alchemized an amazing sound. Creeping death, indeed.

Jon Worley