PENDANT is the recording alias of Los Angeles native Christopher Adams. His Saddle Creek debut Harp is hard-to-define but instantly definitive: a record that connects 90s house and rave music with hip-hop, shoegaze, and pop, tracing a current of experimentalism that runs from icons like Aphex Twin through to contemporaries Yves Tumor and Eartheater. After years of performing in noisy rock outfits like Never Young & Calculator, PENDANT finds Adams embracing a lifelong love of dance and electronic music, the dissolution of his previous projects and the slowdown of the pandemic freeing him from all prior constraints. In its most exhilarating, most exacting moments, Harp recalls the precise but emotionally rich landscapes of Arca or Oneohtrix Point Never, rendered in the watercolors of My Bloody Valentine. “When I was growing up, I looked to music — extreme music, like, punk rock and hardcore — to help raise my senses” explains Adams, “[Harp] was an exercise in following my intuition.”

What makes all these sounds work together is Adams’ confident performances and complex sound worlds—icy yet inviting, ambitious yet grounded. -PITCHFORK