"High Performer" is the second album of the catchy and euphorically disturbing pop and high culture experiment 5K HD. It sounds futuristic, fragile, epic, brute, playful, threatening, cineastic, distorted, loosely flaky, dope, bad ass, sensitive. Their sounds, rhythms and perspectives have chosen 5K HD from a gigantic spectrum that is multi-layered and contradictory. The result is a precise and specific musical language that can be recognized but not named. Both the voice and the instruments are so alienated that one loses sight of who is causing which sound. The band mixes the traditional roles of their instruments, lets the bass play what normally comes from the keyboard or distributes the finger sequences of a piano composition to the other instruments. An electronic sound gets the structure of a baroque madrigal. Elements of minimal, trap and opera are transformed into complex compositions that come across as easy as jazz on heroin.
