There’s a crooked kind of beauty on Half‑Ass Astronaut’s new 10‑track LP I Like Pretty Things that feels like finding a thrift‑store cassette that somehow turns into a small, unexpected treasure. Neil Burkdoll has assembled an album that borrows the grammar of IDM, Acid Techno, Drum ’n’ Bass, and chillaxed Downtempo Electronica but refuses to be translated back into any single dialect.
Instead, these elements are folded into a voice that is unmistakably its own: skittering percussion that sounds like a clock learning to dance, acid lines that quickly wink and then disappear, and bass that remembers jungle breaks but moves with a conspiratorial patience. The record is playful and precise, and best of all it is generous with oddities in its sound design and track composition.
The arrangements favor the loose, exploratory logic of 1990s electronica—longer arcs, patient transitions, and the kind of structural curiosity modern playlists rarely tolerate. Tracks breathe and then misbehave: a drum pattern may split and reconfigure itself mid‑bar, a pad will bloom into something else and then recede, leaving a single, perfect synth flourish behind. That unpredictability is the album’s engine; it keeps you leaning forward even when the tempo relaxes, because you know Burkdoll is likely to pull a trick that reframes everything you thought you heard. It’s experimental without being hermetic and adventurous without being indulgent.
I Like Pretty Things feels unmistakably like a Half‑Ass Astronaut record is its compositional confidence; Burkdoll doesn’t imitate scenes or styles. His production is tactile and slightly mischievous: grooves are layered but never too busy, giving space for the arrangement to breath. There’s a melancholic humor threaded through the LP, a tenderness that surfaces in the quieter tracks and a sly, kinetic joy in the more propulsive ones. These ‘tricks of composition’ drew us immediately back to the mid 1990s; each track is a powerful time capsule.
Released on Not Yet Remembered Records, this LP is a modest, stubborn monument to listening on its own terms. If you want tidy genre boxes, look elsewhere. If you want an album that rewards repeated, undistracted spins and keeps revealing hidden corridors, I Like Pretty Things is a rare and generous find. Burkdoll has made a record that arrives like a midnight postcard from a stranger who knows your favorite secret—strange, tender, and insistently replayable.
I Like Pretty Things by Half-Ass Astronaut releases 10 April, 2026 on Not Yet Remembered