The call of its eponymous subjects can be heard reverberating across a field of heavy bass and delicate bells on “sirens,” the third and final single from ambient dance artist plygid’s debut LP Sensory Shell, encouraging us to journey deeper into the track’s enigmatic terrain. The mechanical core of the planet is exposed when the low-end line wobbles and a drum break crashes through the mist.
Born in Manila, plygid (actual name Miguel) first encountered production on a trip to the United States when he was eight years old, but it would take another seven years for music to become, in the artist’s words, “a serious hobby.” plygid spent his high school years in New Jersey composing shuffling, sample-based hip-hop tracks inspired by left-field jazz rap producers like Madlib and ambient downtempo acts like air.
In college, he began incorporating elements of dance and electronic music into his work but it would be another two years after graduating before he released his first EP in this style: 2021’s outsider house influenced Liminal Green. He quickly followed this up with an industrial techno companion piece: Liminal Red, a collection of lo-fi club tracks in the vein of Delroy Edwards: PHANTOMSPHERE V.1, and a placement on Natural Science’s Future Works VI compilation under his MIGUELNOTTHESINGER alias.
The visualizer for the track, which is also animated by plygid, imagines these feelings as a strange world in which a nameless wanderer has been lost. Unable to connect with mission control, they are accosted by a mystery denizen delivering unsettling information.
“Sirens” occurs at an interstitial zone between two disparate types of dance music, revealing a secret plane of congruence on which they can meet. It’s equal parts ambient sound bath and dubstep resurrection.