Vibrant geometric renders are stacked atop shiny toy tunes on this beautiful, maximalist post-Internet mess

Orange Milk’s catalogue has always been a haven for those in on its brand of post-Internet surrealism. Yet though the music can feel intellectually dense, it remains effortlessly enjoyable. On Glide By, Andy Loebs satisfies these label expectations by proving to listeners that complex percussive experimentation can sit rather easily alongside melodic playfulness when this contrast is framed as a journey across virtual galaxies.

Curiously, the album’s liner notes offer a counter-narrative to the concept of web-based weirdness. Loebs notes that much of the record was captured in transit, framing it as his most “organic” work to date. This tension is what makes Glide By so compelling. The virtual world Loebs traverses here does not feel like some cold, terminally online manifesto; the instrumentation is an intuitive filter through which a modern multi-instrumentalist processes the physical environment around him.

It is quite ironic that the opening track is titled Pleonasm, a term for a description so overly wordy that it ends up burdening the reader with unnecessary information. Given the endless proliferation of hyper-niche subgenres spawned across the internet, it is a clever nod to the discourse itself. Indeed, Loebs traces a complex web of influences: Iglooghost’s percussive deconstructions, Giant Claw’s micro-temporal arrangements, and A.G. Cook’s hyper-synthetic sound design all animate Pleonasm’s colourful textures.

Yet there is nothing redundant or bloated about the track. It opens with an immediately recognisable pitch bend, the weapon of many eccentric electronic instrumentalists. The underlying chord structure remains beautifully simple, offering a stabilising contrast to the micro-rhythmic shifts of the percussion. If anything is pleonastic, it is simply the overwhelming number of sonic associations triggered in the listener’s brain.

On Polymorph i & ii, Loebs plays with abundance in a much more explicit way. The first movement establishes the familiar, erratic rhythmic play and granular fiddling that characterises much of Orange Milk’s music. There is an undeniable sensory satisfaction in hearing micro-grainlets dart across the stereo field, interwoven by virtual call-and-response patterns between chiptune-inspired glissandos. The second half, however, pivots into the nostalgic imaginaries of the early web. Through a brief detour into Euro-pop climaxes, the track unexpectedly shifts into a guitar riff reminiscent of an early-2000s Saturday morning TV show theme. The detritus of modern media pass like houses as Loebs drives on.

But this memory is fleeting; the artist quickly jolts us back into electronic experimentation proper. We hear Lorenzo Senni’s programmatic, pitch-sustained pads alongside dulcimer-infused post-IDM piano riffs, while vocal samples – likely lifted from a Gigi D’Agostino rave anthem – are pitched up, chopped and hyperemotional, in the style of Easyfun. We are squarely in post-genre territory, and it is telling that the online platform Earfeeder tags this record as “utopian virtual”, a classification that describes less about the formal music itself and more about the digital universe it encapsulates.

Melted Gel solidifies this utopian virtual thesis by stacking rapid, unanchored vignettes on top of one another without ever fully resolving them. Its sharp synth stabs recall Fatima Al Qadiri’s 2012 Desert Strike EP, which examined the cross-sections between video games and modern virtual warfare. Loebs’ vision, however, is far more optimistic.

This simultaneity starts to crystallise on Décor by pairing early-Moog synth arpeggios with sudden moments of abrasive percussive turmoil. It feels like fighting a Zelda or Final Fantasy final boss one second and stepping into an advertisement for a vintage antique shop the next; afterwards, the listener is swept into a serene, ascending wash of synthetic bubbles. Glide By, indeed.

The album closes with Cyna Scanner, which acts as a comprehensive wrap-up of the territory that the work has spent its runtime exploring. Fluid jazz rhythms emerge, highlighting Loebs’ background as a multi-instrumentalist while reinforcing the record’s post-genre framework. The track builds dynamically through a repeating piano motif, meticulously edited percussion, and even a brief heavy-metal interlude. It underscores the feeling of being guided through a simulated reality, a blissful tour across disparate musical (and cultural) histories that feels vastly preferable to the world outside our headphones.

This bright album’s brevity – tied up by a delicate nursery-school piano melody that typifies the toy sentimentalism at play  – leaves us with a gentle but grounding reminder: as enchanting as it is to wander through this vibrant town of sounds, we cannot reside there forever. But we can be grateful for gliding by such a beautiful world.