DEMO VECTORS by KERO

Artist: Kero
Title: Demo Vectors
CAT# DETUND 44
FORMAT: 12" + DIGITAL + NFT

Born of the cosmos, condemned to life beneath the glass dome sky, too close to the burning sun. Catapulting through the outskirts of an idea, looking out from a speck of dust that some call home, that we call home.

We came before your beginning. We came before the first murmur of humanity. We were once all there was, but they’ve named us. They call us prefreaks. Something ancient, otherworldly, something they cringe to think of.

My hand is translucent, a product of existing like a specimen trapped beneath a cover slip on the sacrificial platform of a microscope. I navigate my own reflection in a mirror that seems to stare back at me. I told him we couldn’t go this far, so deep into chrome, so isolated that silence vibrates.

I watch a pulsing vein in my palm.They’re hard to see, these pathways of life sustaining cells, but they’re there and I feel them in my dreams. We dream heavy here. We sweat. We cry out. I feel myself twist through the out-there. I do not exist as I am now. I am free to roam and free to destroy, speeding through space, pillaging and taking all that we earned when we were allowed no earnings. In my sleep, I come later and not before.

I had wanted to live in the blue light, long before they installed it everywhere as a way to control and disappoint, a way to discourage our slumbers, our dancing webbed fingers like bat wingspan, our pitying gazes. We once flooded the streets, feet shuffling in time to a rhythm so innate that we never heard a word.

We changed the light bulbs in our cavernous homes, echoing footsteps to tread through the neon yellow abyss that has become the place we rest our tormented minds. One by one, we deactivate the joysticks protruding from our backs. He turns and I twist wires, coaxing him into a relaxed trance, one I crave, one I will have soon enough. No one can jolt me out of status fugue, grabbing at my spine, rotating clockwise and counterclockwise and directions that defy both directions. No one can hurt us here, but we must be quiet. We must be respectful. We must enjoy this time out of the metallics and away from the glass. Here, we escape magnification.

They call it bliss out there. They feed us bliss, We drink bliss. We smoke bliss. We disappear into a haze of bliss down a bass filled corridor, a consolation prize for the void we occupy. The cuff reads the levels. The cuff gives us more. Thin metal bracelet, reading hot or cold, generating pulses, traveling those corridors of life sustaining cells until we want nothing. Whatever method, anytime until our eyes glaze in epic complacency and the truth tumbles back into our mouths. In these moments, what is what? And who the fuck are you? I loved you? In what lifetime? In this moment, the rod of my spine controls me. In these moments, you turn on me. You do not deactivate me. We snake through hallways, limbs controlled by no one we know.

Last night, I heard a whisper, “groundzeroback.” I begged for the future past, to return forward, to start over, to create the next that we want, a way out of the blue and into the pink, back to a sunset that I never got to see. Zero was just the beginning.
~ Sophia Warren

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Audio visual sculptor Kero operates the multidisciplinary arts collective Detroit Underground record label and continues to produce bit crushed experimental electronic music with over two decades under his belt.

Demo Vectors showcases Kero's sonic range—bouncing back and forth between IDM fractures, broken electro shapes and an all around low-end forcefield. Splicing machined modular tunes with syncopated rhythms and Detroit-inspired slivers, Kero's fingerprints can be found on IDM torch bearing imprints like Ghostly International, Neo Ouija, Shitkatapult, Semantica, Touchin' Bass, Low Res, BPitch Control, Crazy Language, Touched Music, Kaer'Uiks and many others.

Using different studio setups from 1998 to 2021, Demo Vectors culminated from many different locations including Detroit, Windsor, Barcelona, Berlin and Los Angeles and reveals Kero's curriculum vitae packaged in a 60 minute robust collection.

The downtempo groove of "ABSTR_B&B" offers a classic bricolage of collapsed mechanical percussion straight from the foundry as the definitive sound design and glitchy bits of "BLISS" take shape. Fluid robotics and bass jabs progress on "GROUNDZEROBACK" pushing each pixel to their breaking point. You'll also find stark industrial elements on tracks like "PREFREAK.EPS" and spastic acid on "COMOFFICE-1" displaying the wide angle lens Kero employs to capture improvised dark drill'n bass techniques with a Squarepusher sheen. From the slow burning "PILL'LATHE2" humming its way across laid back digitized acrobatics to the aptly titled "COLOR_CUB" that clicks, cuts and collects subtle low frequency modulations, Demo Vectors is a tightly compacted and forward thinking IDM album.

Sandblasted electronics mixed with shattered glass and corrosive blips'n bleeps, Demo Vectors acts as Kero's raison d'etre as each piece eclipses itself.
~ Igloo magazine

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Detroit Underground (est. 1997) is a multidisciplinary arts collective. Functioning primarily as a record label dedicated to electronic based experimental music and video installation.

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