From 1995-2005 Mike Cadoo crafted some of the most forward-thinking music available as half of the post-industrial/IDM duo Gridlock. Few could claim a more visceral, workmanlike approach to electronic music in a scene deluged by laptop upstarts. However, by 2004, the balance between personal fulfillment and external accolades had shifted. In surveying the unending pursuit of “future music,” Cadoo realized that a personal retreat was due. And so by re-embracing his love for live instruments and raw expression unhindered by the demands of trainspotters and gearheads alike, he formed Bitcrush.
Although 2004's Enarc differed minimally from Gridlock, 2005's Shimmer and Fade announced a meld of shoegaze fuzz, pop drumming, faded vocals and epiphanic structures. Jittery beats now bowed to truer rhythms while complex synth lines were retraced along the necks of distorted guitars. This sound climaxed on 2006’s In Distance—an album that created a unique space for followers of Slowdive, Lush and Mogwai to seek agency with fans of Swans or Sigur Rós. With Bitcrush, the aim had been soundly reset from the head to the heart.
While no less the skilled programmer, Cadoo then advanced to his "rock" album—2008's Epilogue in Waves—in which analog instruments were favored over electronics. The title was also meant to be literal. With the birth of his son in 2006, priorities had shuffled. Stretched thin by running the n5MD label, a mailorder business and the travails of any adult life, Cadoo felt that the role of musician was one too many to ensure family time. For someone who wears his emotions on his sleeve (even if that sleeve is rarely black), it felt right.
Only later, after seeing Sonic Youth with their children in attendance, did Cadoo realize the necessity of remaining true to himself as a musician and for his son to grow up knowing him as one. With this newfound vigor, Cadoo embarked on Bitcrush's most spacious release yet—2010's Of Embers. While no "ambient" album per se, Of Embers sets a much earthier and echoing foundation with some cuts eclipsing fifteen-minutes. The walls of sound now seem more tidal; the rise and retreat of each layer more natural. Whether this broader compositional approach stems from the broadening of Cadoo's own life, or merely the evolution of a veteran composer reaching for new heights is as unknown as it is irrelevant. Now more than ever, it simply is what it is.
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groovesmagIt seems unlikely, maybe even a bit uncanny, but n5MD label head Mike Cadoo has always sensed that his expansive musical meanderings would culminate in project like In Distance, his new record under the Bitcrush moniker.
“I kind of thought, maybe in the back of my mind, somewhere and in some way I would get to a point where all of my influences—everything that I’ve done to a certain point—would all come together, you know, they’d all sort of meet somewhere,” says Cadoo over the phone from his home in Oakland. “I think [In Distance] is pretty close to that.”
The record he refers to—his second full-length under the Bitcrush tag, following 2004’s Enarc and the 2005 EP Shimmer and Fade—sees Cadoo breach all manner of aesthetic and emotive counterpoints. Drawing from dense shoegazer melancholy, intricately executed IDM, and layered post-rock instrumentalism, In Distance glistens with emotive resonance as much as it does with technical and artistic evolution.
“I think I kind of pushed beyond my own boundary, which was pretty much strictly electronics before,” he says. “Now maybe I can kind of take a chance and go a little further.”
Cadoo has come a long way from starting Gridlock with Mike Wells a decade ago as little more than a vauge notion. “When I joined up with Mike, I really knew nothing about electronic music at all,” he says. “I had a drum machine and maybe a little other stuff , and I was toying around. I actually met him throughthe metal scene... I initially thought it was going to be a side-project, but it ended up being the main gig.”
The pair debuted with the dark, noise-based The Synthetic Form (Pendragon) in 1997 and released its acclaimed sophomore album Further (also on Pendragon) in 1999, before dropping the sparsely abstracted Trace (Unit) in 2001. Despite leading to its demise as a duo, Cadoo still sees Gridlock’s final album together, 2003’s Formless (Hymen), as its most significant statement.
“It’s kind of my favorite,” he says. “I think that’s kind of our apex, and I think at that point we were kind of, musically and in our lives, starting to head in two different directions.
“We had worked pretty much nine years straight together. We would go very little time without working in the studio, and after a while it gets tiring, you know. When a band gets of a certain size, too, and there’s business involved, things can kind of spiral out of control and there’s misunderstandings. And both Mike and I are guilty of not communicating well. But I don’t regret anything at all, as far as the Gridlock experience. Sure, there are some things I could have done differently, but I had a really good time doing what we did.”
The split, and the emergence of the Bitcrush concept, gave Cadoo the chance to fully immerse himself in the emotional aspect of music. It’s an approach that’s at the heart of n5MD, which is summed up in the label’s tagline: “Emotional experiments in music.”
“I always say this to a lot of the artists on the label when they get in kind of a hang up when they’re writing a track or something, or have writer’s block: I say, ‘Heart to hands, do it heart to hands,’” he says. “It’s about trying to not second guess yourself too much.”
This couldn’t be more apparent than on In Distance, especially “Song for Three,” which Cadoo wrote for his newborn son Trey. “I wanted the first half to sound like what the music would sound like from the inside, you know, and then the song falls out and has a huge impact when it drops, because obviously when he was born, there was a huge impact on our lives,” he says. “I kind of wanted it to convey that.”
Despite all his musical endeavors and directions, Cadoo feels Bitcrush to be his most expressive, instinctive, and rewarding thus far, saying “it really levels me out.”
“I guess I just want to have some sort of emotional impact, to connect with people on that level,” he says. “That’s the most important thing to me, I think: to convey how I’m feeling or just connect with people on a level that’s beyond... surface and ear.”
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