Freeform

Brighton’s <a href="spotify:artist:1LO9coV1IHnGaRNUqqffG3" data-name="Simon Pyke">Simon Pyke</a> releases playfully exploratory electronica under the name Freeform (also now releasing under his given name). Expanding on the rhythmic and percussive elements of a style first seriously pursued by artists such as <a href="spotify:artist:37KB5e6cGsN1AQAB9Omm1U" data-name="Coil">Coil</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:6WH1V41LwGDGmlPUhSZLHO" data-name="Autechre">Autechre</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:6kBDZFXuLrZgHnvmPu9NsG" data-name="Aphex Twin">Aphex Twin</a>, Freeform material at times invests more in real world sounds and melody than the above, playing dense, sparking rhythmic figures off one another in complex, shifting patterns that manage to suggest ambient, experimental electro, techno, dub, and industrial all at once. After releasing an album on Ambient Soho house label Worm Interface and a stunning on Skam (co-owned by <a href="spotify:artist:6WH1V41LwGDGmlPUhSZLHO" data-name="Autechre">Autechre</a> and fast becoming one of future electronica&#39;s most popular scouting-grounds), Simon Pyke was snapped up by Sheffield&#39;s Warp label in 1995. His Warp debut, a double 12-inch/CD-EP entitled prowl, was a mixture of the dirty experimental fracture of his previous Skam work and the more hi-res, circuitous electro-lounge of Warp and Clear artists such as <a href="spotify:artist:5akVqMzdZOdbMYbE4vNZWD" data-name="Plaid">Plaid</a>, 
<a href="spotify:artist:4ZgIWfyg9BkcqnJJ2xVR3f" data-name="Mouse On Mars">Mouse On Mars</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:2dxfrIXDVz9vrggJPRuJrZ" data-name="Doctor Rockit">Doctor Rockit</a>. Although he never followed up with a full-length for the label, Simon Pyke contributed a new track to a promo-only cassette compilation given out by Warp during a European label tour, as well as to the 1996 Worm Interface compilation, Frequencies. After his second album for WI, 1997&#39;s <a href="spotify:album:0toCkVX7o2xFVY26ueYqKa" data-name="Heterarchy">Heterarchy</a>, he released three albums in three years for three labels: Headphone (pattern tub), Sprawl (<a href="spotify:album:7ISwAYaGV9xKTdQhYW5hsk" data-name="Me Shape">Me Shape</a>), and Sub Rosa ( <a href="spotify:album:5bJS1R4x07V0wa74yAQ0Q6" data-name="Green Park">Green Park</a>).