Absurd Matter is a labyrinthine sonic conundrum that spirals around the two poles of extreme noise and hip-hop. It’s Berlin-based Italian producer Shapednoise’s first album in four years and confidently advances his narrative into the next chapter, building on the groundwork of his prior abstractions to emerge with a coherent genre-warped fusion of urgent rap, crushing bass weight and idiosyncratic sound design. After spending years scrupulously deconstructing club music, Nino Pedone has rebuilt it brick by brick in his image. The album arrives after a period of severe anxiety for the producer when he unexpectedly lost his hearing. Absurd Matter tells a critical narrative that’s cut with visceral pain and panic, from the unsettling intro that features David Lynch’s longtime collaborator Dean Hurley, through the cautious cacophony of the unstable “Swash” all the way to the album’s isolated but dizzying conclusion. The album is the first release on Pedone’s brand new imprint Weight Looming, a multidisciplinary label platform that’s set to explore the depths of bass music, textured noise and abrasive transcendence. It follows a slew of acclaimed releases for Numbers, Opal Tapes, Type, and his own Cosmo Rhythmatic label, and forward-thinking collaborations with Kenyan beat alchemist Slikback and Hyperdub-signed Angolan producer, Nazar. Pedone’s most ambitious project to date, Absurd Matter taps into kinetic energy from a hand-picked selection of collaborators, including New York rap duo Armand Hammer, French DJ/producer Brodinski, Bruiser Brigade’s ZelooperZ, and vanguard Philly poet, musician, and activist Moor Mother. On “Family”, billy woods and Elucid weave a dismal, apocalyptic landscape with their razor-sharp anecdotes. The duo’s macabre imagery is given artificial life by Pedone’s industrial scrapes and rattles that curl around their worlds like thick smoke. It’s still rap, just about, but lodges itself in the back room of a factory, machines running themselves to an early death. Pairing with techno-rap trailblazer Brodinski, Pedone edges further towards the sound system, spatializing rhythms in four dimensions around Detroit rapper ZelooperZ’s playful expressions. This is the Italian producer’s sci-fi tinged liquefaction of radio echoes, a way to fire familiarity into the void and sublime the human voice into weightless mist. When Moor Mother arrives shouting “me me me” on the aptly-titled “Poetry”, it sounds as if all of Pedone’s loose threads are being tightened into a knot. His misshapen neo-grime beats sound like a broken jet engine, but smartly cede power to Moor Mother’s resonant rhymes.