Krypto Grotesk is the industrial dub project of duo Konrad Agnas (“drums and transients”) and Anton Sundell (“processing and sounds”). Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Krypto Grotesk’s 2019 release Post Urban Exotica is a refreshing and attention grabbing entry in the all too similar world of electroacoustic instrumental Hip-Hop.
Anton Sundell’s massaging of Konrad Agnas’s organic instrumentation with ‘solid’ or ‘found’ audio creates textural impressions of a cold, urban environment. The clangs and clutters of city life are there reverberating throughout its landscape, while a garbology of European cultural aesthetics haunts on in the form of piano, LP manipulation, and samples of ‘laconic messages’ (anti-smoking meditation tapes).
Unlike the pop-exoticism of the 1950s, Krypto Grotesk’s Post Urban Exotica doesn’t so much employ musical impressions of any perceived place as it does apply an all too likely, weird and eerie dystopian lens upon a shared sense of westernized urbanism.
A great album for fans of the video game Paratopic.
For fans of: Bill Laswell, Praxis, WWW Neurobeat
Like Krypto Grotesk? Give these a listen: BeauChaotica, Cenobites, Polyphonic Shooting Spree
The Resident Sound 