99%

Founded in 2012, Pixelord’s Hyperboloid Records has quietly become the beating heart of Moscow’s bass-addled underground, a label that treats genre boundaries as polite suggestions rather than rules. 99% is its 99th release and a suitably unhinged milestone: fifteen tracks of braindance, acid and rave-baiting breakcore from the label’s founder himself, wrapped in garish, video-game-cartridge artwork and already picked out in Bandcamp Daily’s Best Electronic roundup for May.

The record gets off the blocks with Vstavai (“get up”), which does exactly that—a shouted vocal bursts through a hail of battered breakbeats before the groove snaps into a gloriously lopsided skank. GENE follows with brittle acid lines and a half-speed swing, all crunchy 808s and detuned squelch, whilst NFT Acid does what its title promises and then some: a relentless 303 workout whose fizzing arpeggios are built for a warehouse ceiling at three in the morning.

Tron is the record’s glossiest moment, all neon synth arpeggios and a thumping four-to-the-floor kick, while FX Twin offers the closest thing to introspective braindance—glitched pads and hyper-edited percussion that nod to the obvious influence without ever imitating. Best of all is Sunday Jungle, a drum & bass excursion with the tempo dragged down and the breaks left gloriously ragged, which somehow lands as the most danceable thing here. Apocalip.sys and Drumvox keep the beat-slicing chaos coming, the latter resolving into a proper rave drop just when you’ve given up on one.

Closer 1% is a surprise, shimmering out on soft melodic pads that feel almost tender after so much racket—proof that Pixelord knows when to switch the carnival off. Not every idea lands: around the midpoint, Hashtag and Click Hero lean a little too hard on volume over staying power, and fifteen tracks is a lot to sustain at this intensity.

But 99% wears its hyper-detailed production lightly. Every reversed snare and detuned acid line is placed with care, yet the record never feels laboured—just ferociously fun. For a label’s 99th outing, it’s a statement of intent: braindance brainy enough for the IDM crowd and rowdy enough for the rave, delivered with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what his corner of Moscow sounds like.