Monophonic Underground’s debut EP Do or DIY doesn’t ask for your attention, it quietly pulls you in. Built across three focused months in 2024/25 and shaped by analogue obsession, field recordings, and cut-up experimentation, this project feels like wandering through familiar streets after dark and realizing they’re not quite the same anymore. Rooted in ambient, IDM, and experimental electronic music, the EP lives in the tension between control and collapse, intention and accident. It’s subtle, uneasy, and strangely comforting in its refusal to explain itself.
1. Do or DIY: The title track sets the tone immediately. Acid baselines pulse underneath restrained percussion, while foley and found sounds drift in and out like half-remembered conversations. There’s a sense of quiet rebellion here, not loud protest, but personal refusal. This track leans heavily into the idea that creation itself is an act of resistance, especially in a world drowning in noise and polarised narratives. Nothing is overplayed. The minimal structure lets small details matter, a texture shift here, a sound fragment there. It feels like someone choosing to make something anyway, even if it disappears into the void. That mindset becomes the mission statement for the whole EP.
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2. A19_a1 : This track feels like motion without destination. Named like a file pulled straight from a hard drive, A19_a1 mirrors the experience of travel, roads, transitions, liminal spaces. The beat stays understated, almost hesitant, while synth elements ebb and flow with a mechanical calm. There’s a cold beauty to this one. You can hear the influence of early acid house and modern minimal techno, but stripped of club excess. It plays more like a mental drive than a physical one, soundtracking late-night thoughts where nothing dramatic happens, yet everything feels loaded.
3. Killer (for harmony): This is the EP’s slow-burn centerpiece. Killer (for harmony) invites the listener into suburbia as night takes over. Familiar environments turn uneasy as melodies begin to decay and external sounds creep in, police radios, distant sirens, empty streets. The track unfolds patiently, letting tension build without rushing payoff. As layers break down, it becomes less about rhythm and more about atmosphere. You’re not being guided , you’re being dropped into a place and left to sit with it. It’s unsettling in a quiet way, like realizing you’re alone much later than expected.
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4. Cabin Fever: The closing track feels claustrophobic by design. Cabin Fever leans into repetition and confinement, echoing the internal pressure that comes from isolation and overexposure to your own thoughts. Synth lines circle back on themselves, percussion barely nudges forward, and everything feels intentionally boxed in. It’s a fitting ending, not resolution, but acceptance. The EP doesn’t wrap itself up neatly. Instead, it leaves you with the sense that this was a moment in time, captured and then let go. Knowing much of the original material was deleted only adds to that feeling. What remains is what survived the process.
Do or DIY is not built for passive listening. It’s a project that rewards patience, curiosity, and repeat plays. Influenced by silent cinema, Brion Gysin’s cut-up philosophy, and a mix of analogue and digital processes, Monophonic Underground delivers an EP that values process over perfection. This release matters because it doesn’t chase approval. It exists because it needed to exist. And in an era where everything feels optimised, that choice alone makes Do or DIY stand out in the experimental electronic space.
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