There is a moment early in Intercelestial when the whole record seems to shrug off reality. Distorted fragments from ‘Nice Try’ stumble into the room, drums trip over themselves, and then everything snaps into a wicked grin as the groove takes over. From that point on the album behaves like a mischievous entity that knows exactly what it is doing, even when it pretends otherwise. Record Of Tides clearly enjoy bending the rules, but here the project dissolves those rules entirely.
The early stretch of the album is a carnival of strange circuitry. ‘Yoshimoto Animation Tag’ brings game console ghosts chattering in the corners. Voices glitch into odd shapes. Beats wander in and out of the frame like stray animals that somehow understand rhythm better than most producers. There is joy in the chaos, a kind of cracked celebration of sound for its own sake. Nothing is tidy. Everything is alive.
Then the record drifts into a softer current. ‘Brother Love feat. IG-75’ arrives with the smoothness of an old soul record that has been left out in the sun. Warm downtempo swing, a velvet glide, a sense of unhurried confidence. It is the kind of moment that invites the listener to sink deeper into the album’s world and stay a while.
Light pours in soon after. The shimmer of ‘Superdusk’ floats through the mix like morning sun through an open window. Just when the brightness seems ready to settle, glitchy vocal snippets and bass shadows slip across the surface. The contrast is delicious. The album keeps shifting between radiance and glitch, between clarity and interruption, as if it is tuning itself to multiple realities at once.
The middle section slows everything to a crawl. ‘Filets’ lets pads bloom and collapse in long arcs. Textures shuffle and thud. Melodic fragments surface like creatures rising from deep water before vanishing again. It is ambient music with a restless streak, always on the verge of becoming something else.
Then comes the moment where the record starts playing tricks. In ‘Kitchen Spam’, percussion pans across the stereo field. Distorted pads smear into cosmic plucks. A broken hip-hop beat staggers into view, dragging samples from films and forgotten songs behind it. The whole thing resembles a collage assembled by someone who refuses to admit they are making art even, as the evidence piles up.
A heavier presence emerges next. ‘Hangar Check For Nothing’ grinds forward with the slow determination of a machine built for a purpose no one has explained. The highly rhythmic melodic progression carries the weight of a metal track while the atmosphere remains soft and electronic. It is a strange hybrid, and it works because the album has already trained the listener to trust its instincts.
The final third of the record settles into a dreamlike coastal drift. Think: Slow broken beats, downtempo gravity, ambient synth hazes. ‘The Beach Crate’ summons the ghost of a banjo and the honk of some ancient horn and then ‘The Beach Shop’ strips away those antique textures and leaves only the pulse of it all behind. ‘The Beach Motel’ proceeds with the established melodic air but invites birds into the mix as if the studio door had been left open. The motif repeats but never stagnates. Each piece is a different angle of the same surreal shoreline.
Just when it seems the album might dissolve entirely, a collage of found sounds snaps into place with surprising elegance. ‘Dictionary’ lets objects clatter and fragments collide until melody and rhythm emerge from the rubble. It is a reminder that chaos can be coaxed into order with the right touch.
The closing track brings everything into focus. ‘Fish Tank’ reports for duty with a distorted kick/snare pattern while loose bass and lovely arpeggiated synth lines drift upward like sunlight through water. It is minimal, summery, and strangely triumphant. The record ends not with a conclusion but with continuation.
Intercelestial is a rare creature. It is experimental without apology, adventurous without self-consciousness, and confident enough to wander wherever curiosity leads. Record Of Tides has crafted an album that refuses to sit still, refuses to sit inside of a genre, refuses to explain itself, and refuses to be anything other than exactly what it is: a strange and beautiful transmission from a place just off the map.
Intercelestial by Record Of Tides was released 27 March, 2026 on Mahorka