Department : Audacity Files
The cost prohibitive nature of sample clearance and the abundance of Soundcloud beat tapes has worn much of the novelty and cultural cachet off of the album-length sample tapestry. While there’s no shortage of budding J Dillas and DJ Shadows still stitching together their own threads of disparate source material into engaging headphone candy, it takes something special to stand out in a post-Donuts, post-Endtroducing landscape—a vision beyond a good record collection and the ability to compress it into 45 minutes of seamless grooves. Not that this isn’t an admirable enough set of goals on their own.
Audacity Files, the sophomore release by Macedonian-born Australia-based producer Adam Kyriakou, aka Department, is a compact sample symphony that leaves a sizable impression on first listen. Audacity Files, a double-entendre of a title indicating both the size of its ambition and the freeware audio editor that I can only assume was put to use here, is a blend of psychedelia, ’60s pop and ’90s R&B yielding a bright and joyful listen that doesn’t demand much in the way of time but has the chops to command the listener’s attention during that brief window.
Despite the plunderphonic nature of the way in which Audacity Files is constructed, it very rarely seems to rest comfortably in any one genre; neither hip-hop nor trip-hop nor downtempo would seem to apply to a manic juxtaposition of sounds like “2024-1964,” which drops the primal scream doo-wop of Tammys’ “Egyptian Shumba” into a buzzing 303 bass explosion. “Dumb Angel” is all big, booming drum machine crack juxtaposed against a bright and beautiful array of strings, pianos and all manner of voices, as much emblematic of early ‘00s indie psych as it does sampladelic beat music. And “Shadow Play” is less the post-punk dirge its title would imply than a chaotic juxtaposition of elements that comes to life with a climactic swell of sound, eventually finding its way toward a soulful outro driven by a saxophone solo.
The set’s most sprawling moment, the 12-minute “Distant Voices, Still Lives”—something of an MPC concerto unto itself—phases through various movements, intertwining baroque pop and psychedelia, ‘90s R&B with Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” (with a twist of Spiritualized), ebbing and climaxing, a radiant journey of an epic. Closing with the sweetly moving gospel epilogue “Oh Lord,” Audacity Files holds on to that transcendence just a little bit longer, capturing the brilliant glow of the album’s 37 minutes in miniature. As with any such work meticulously crafted with layer upon layer, there are new details to uncover on subsequent listens, but it’s less the fine workmanship than the playful sense of unpredictability that sets Audacity Files apart as a uniquely magnetic set of sounds.
Label: Self-released
Year: 2026
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