Hegemony of Delete is electronic music in dialogue with the real rhythms of work and leisure. As Co La, Matthew Papich courts the minor distractions and interruptions typically seen to dilute workflow or artistic process. With or without an audience—in the studio and in performance—his music subtly works the room, not unlike those comedians who semi-secretly draw their momentum from crowd “interruptions.”

The six songs of this 12” bear the marks of Co La’s working method, to which the title refers. Each is structurally digressive, rhythmically protean, and littered with distorting spatial impressions and musical non-sequiturs (the interjection of anonymous voices, ambient noise, dryly evocative samples, etc,), all of which contributes to a pronounced sense of artifice. Yet the music never gets carried away with itself. Its potency is in the way it stays grounded in and mysteriously articulates its own obscure, fleeting circumstances, even as it shapes them—a delicately maintained feedback circuit, a relaxed conversation with a synthetic atmosphere.

Co La is a project by Baltimore-based musician and producer Matthew Papich.