CleanɆrⱤoⱤ

Rn5A – Figuren: Glitches on a Grid, Narrated by Machines

Crystalline Protocols in Pattern Form

Label: Perspektif
Released: 2025
Format: Digital
🎧 Listen / Buy on Bandcamp →

This one hit the feed fresh and clean—Rn5A’s Figuren is a razor-cut slab of glitchy audio sculpture that feels less like music and more like stumbling into a well-dressed machine language dream. Everything about this album is tactile, crisp, and unsettling in that fun, quietly-malign way. It’s not aggressive, but it’s aware. It knows you’re listening.

There’s this robotic female voice that shows up across multiple tracks—kind of a digital narrator cutting in mid-thought, maybe issuing protocol commands or instructions you’re not quite meant to understand. No clue what language it is—could be German, could be AI hallucinating—but it works. It gives the whole thing a sci-fi interface vibe, like the record is less of an album and more of an operating system booting up, one module at a time.

A Grid of Glitch and Clarity

The glitch design here is super tight. I mean, really crisp. Blips and bleeps are surgically sharp, and the bass stabs cut through like pressure cracks in synthetic stone. He’s probably using layered granular effects and maybe some multiband distortion chains—could be a mix of Max devices or even Eurorack with precision envelopes. The processing feels dialed in at a macro level—never noisy for the sake of it. Everything’s placed with care.

There’s a certain Raster-Noton DNA here too—think early Byetone, Mika Vainio’s Vandal ep, if they leaned a little more playful and less stark. The rhythm and groove are fractured but always land. You can hear it in the transitions especially—they don’t dissolve, they pivot, like geometric flips on a visual grid.

This is one of those rare albums where it feels wrong to pull out individual tracks. Every piece here folds into the larger structure, like sonic tessellations. You can tell just by the track titles—everything’s mapped conceptually to ideas like pattern, rhythm, glitch structures, sequencing. It’s not “songwriting” in the classic sense—it’s more like data choreography.

The whole thing plays out like one big listening puzzle. Not overly complex, just cleverly arranged—like music written with the grid rather than on it.

Worth noting—Rn5A has an earlier release called ITERATE where every track clocks in at 1:04. It’s wild. Like a loop sketchbook or timing experiment. The sound palette there is similar to Figuren, but tighter, almost like a prototype version. Felt like a warmup for this full-length release. There’s clearly a through-line in style: glitchy rhythms, clean distortion, minimal but exact design choices. It’s experimental music, but there’s fun built into it. It’s not precious.

Glitch Clarity Index: ✂️✂️✂️✂️✂️/5
Nothing muddy here. Each transient feels vacuum-sealed and placed under a microscope.

Narrative Interface Energy: 💬🤖💬🤖/5
Robovoice protocol energy. Feels like you’re being instructed, or hacked gently.

DSP Geometry Rating: 📐📐📐📐.5/5
If beat programming was made in Rhino3D, it would sound like this.

Raster-ish Comparison Factor: 🧬🧬🧬🧬/5
Hints of Noton, but filtered through a slicker, more personable system prompt.

Grid Fidelity Score: 9.2/10
It all sticks together. Clean patterns, no saggy transitions. Feels snapped to something precise.

What makes Figuren work so well is its blend of precision and character. It’s not just technical, and it’s not just abstract—it balances both. It feels like an experiment with a soul, or a lab report written with style. It’s music for people who like hearing how machines think.

Every part of this record sounds like it was placed intentionally on a digital shelf, ready to be reassembled by whoever’s listening. It’s also just fun. Even at its most sterile, there’s a playful little glitch smile behind the structure.

Rn5A’s world is clean, mathematical, and glitchy—but it’s not cold. Figuren proves that grid-based audio can still surprise you.

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