Kin­bote – oth­er­wise known as found-sound sam­pling glitch-pop pro­duc­er Matt Gibb – released a quirky and intrigu­ing sin­gle called Hiemalis in the sum­mer, reviewed on Gourmet Gigs. And on 4th Decem­ber he launched his album called Shift­ing Dis­tance.

The cov­er of Shift­ing Dis­tance fea­tures slices of scenery, tan­ta­lis­ing but unable to be grasped and expe­ri­enced in their entire­ty. And so it is with the album itself, which is akin to sam­pling frag­ments of some­thing, ele­ments from dreams and remem­bered expe­ri­ences. Indeed this new work took a year to write and was fin­ished dur­ing lock­down at a time when Matt was pre­oc­cu­pied with thoughts about distance. 

The open­ing track Coins with Lit­tle Holes in Them is a woozy piece with what sounds like an arcade game and a fair­ground organ rat­tling along in the back­ground. It was actu­al­ly record­ed when Matt was liv­ing oppo­site a casi­no with slot machines.

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Kin­bote gath­ers seem­ing­ly dis­parate ele­ments which might, on paper, not look like a work­able thing, but he makes it hap­pen. The result­ing tracks are an intrigu­ing mix of play­ful, wist­ful and occa­sion­al­ly melan­cholic. Some­times you feel like you’re lis­ten­ing to some­thing going on in an adja­cent room. 

And there’s a strong visu­al qual­i­ty to it all, espe­cial­ly with those ele­ments which evoke feel­ings of nos­tal­gia. Mat­t’s “bro­ken char­i­ty shop Yama­ha key­board on ‘toy piano’ set­ting” is a case in point.

The lat­est sin­gle (On a String) has, as Matt says, “a lot going on” but he man­ages to keep it seam­less. Pass­ing Through a North Fac­ing Win­dow is very glitchy and I find it odd­ly sooth­ing, con­sid­er­ing it was orig­i­nal­ly called ‘quar­an­tine’ and was made right as we all went into lockdown. 

Shift­ing Dis­tance was released by Lost Map Records on lim­it­ed edi­tion CD‑R and via dig­i­tal ser­vices on Decem­ber 4, 2020