Andrew Spackman opens The Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe Hoax with a spirit that is rooted in the earliest era of electronic sound design, when the BBC Radiophonic Workshop relied on tape, tone generators, and physical manipulation to summon entire worlds from raw noise. The album moves with the same unruly curiosity that defined those pre-synthesizer experiments, where a single hiss or pulse could become a character and where structure was suggested rather than imposed. From the outset, Spackman positions his work closer to exploratory audio theatre than to conventional music, inviting the listener into a shifting field of textures that resemble drifting smoke more than composed form.
As the album drifts forward, its movements are less like crafted compositions and more like habitats forming in slow-motion, shaped by unseen ghostly machinery. Textures emerge, recede, and reappear in altered states as if Spackman is guiding the listener through a laboratory of curious sonic reactions. Hums, crackles, and broken signals gather into loose patterns that never settle into familiar shapes, recalling the way early Radiophonic experiments often suggested narrative through sound alone. The effect is quietly hypnotic, a steady pull into an environment where meaning is sensed rather than measured.
Amid these shifting textures, more familiar sounds appear in forms that are deliberately estranged. Horns, piano, and various stringed instruments surface as fragments or echoes rather than as traditional musical statements, which creates a subtle tension between recognition and dislocation. This approach mirrors early pre-synthesis practices in which conventional instruments were recorded, altered, and re-contextualized to produce unfamiliar timbres. Spackman treats these sounds not as carriers of melody but as raw material for atmosphere, bending them into shapes that support the album’s sense of unstable space.
Throughout The Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe Hoax, Spackman navigates between abstraction and subtle familiarity, drawing on a palette that is both unorthodox and precise. The textures, instruments, and processes evoke an exploratory ethos reminiscent of early Radiophonic experiments while asserting a contemporary perspective that is entirely his own. Listeners encounter environments that shift imperceptibly, oscillating between noise and suggestion, instrumentation and soundscape, recognition and estrangement. The album stands as a space in which sounds are both discovered and constructed, a continuum where unconventional approaches meet a careful, attentive hand.
The Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe Hoax by Andrew Spackman releases on the 12th of December 2025 on Mortality Tables
