Skot Kremen’s ‘Shattered State’ EP, serves as a poignant architectural study of modern disorientation. Across its three movements, Kremen eschews the typical tropes of electronic or alternative soundscapes in favor of a visceral, almost tactile exploration of psychological erosion. The record functions less like a collection of songs and more like a cohesive descent into a fever dream where the boundaries between the self and the surrounding environment become increasingly porous.
The journey begins with Lightheaded, a title that suggests a gentle ascent but instead delivers atmospheric friction. The track captures that precise, dizzying moment where gravity feels like a suggestion rather than a law. Kremen utilizes a palette of ethereal textures that shimmer with a deceptive fragility, masking a rhythmic heartbeat that feels erratic yet intentional. It establishes a sensory baseline of instability, mirroring the physical sensation of losing one’s footing in a world that refuses to stand still.
This sense of drift matures into a more profound existential anxiety during “Off Course. If the opening was about the sensation of falling, this second movement is about the realization that the destination has been permanently lost. There is a deliberate wandering in the composition, a refusal to resolve into comfortable melodies. Kremen creates a sonic landscape that feels vast and unmapped, where every instrumental layer seems to be searching for a center that no longer exists. The production here is particularly striking for its use of negative space, allowing the silence between sounds to carry as much weight as the notes themselves.
The experience culminates in the title track which acts as the inevitable collision point for the preceding themes. Here, the fractured elements of the EP are finally forced to confront one another. The composition is dense and demanding, vibrating with a chaotic energy that suggests a total collapse of internal order. Yet, within this wreckage, Kremen finds a strange, crystalline beauty. The track implies that there is a certain honesty to be found in being broken, that once the facade of wholeness is stripped away, what remains is something raw, authentic, and undeniably human.
Skot Kremen has managed to translate the abstract feeling of contemporary fragmentation into a coherent musical language. It is a work that does not offer easy answers or melodic comfort, choosing instead to sit with the listener in the ruins of the psyche. By the time the final echoes fade, the EP leaves behind a lingering question about whether we are ever truly whole, or if we are all simply navigating our own beautifully shattered states.
Listen or buy here: Bandcamp
