Bark Dog, 'holding pattern' 

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• Bark Dog, holding pattern

(Self-released, digital)

Bennington-based musician Blair Jasper straddles the tenuous line between pop and experimental music on their latest release, holding pattern. Jasper, a self-described "nonbinary experimental musician" who uses they/them pronouns, releases music under the moniker Bark Dog. The project serves as a wide canvas of sounds and genres that Jasper pulls together into a joyously tenacious sound. Occasionally that sound strays into a mess, but more often than not, holding pattern coalesces into one very weird yet incessantly interesting record.

The album starts with an electronic hit of dopamine: "sample and hold." Not to be confused with the Neil Young rocker from Young's own bizarre album Trans, Jasper's "sample and hold" charges in with an EDM beat before breaking apart into a cauldron of bubbling synths. More than halfway through the song, the synths suddenly give way to a gentle indie rock number and Jasper's echo-laden vocal.

The shift is so abrupt that its initial effect is jarring. Jasper isn't exactly just sticking song bits together with Krazy Glue, but the musician is clearly indulging their stranger instincts. On the project's Facebook page, Jasper writes that the album is "the end result of me not being afraid to try weird shit and just have fun writing songs."

holding pattern is certainly a record without fear. Jasper vacillates between indie rock, electronica and experimental sounds with little rhyme or reason and no sign of an overall theme. Rather than derail the record, that sense of anything-can-happen propels the 11 tracks. From the fucked-up club vibe of "paradigm shifted" — with Jasper using studio trickery to pull their voice in multiple directions over a glitchy, stop-start beat — to the Gus Dapperton-esque indie rocker "dinghy," Bark Dog lurches from one sound to the next like a chaotic force.

"general idea" approaches Flaming Lips territory as Jasper introduces a psychedelic element to their songwriting. They layer their voice in waves atop an acoustic guitar before dropping programmed beats, tittering synths and vocal samples that create a kind of streamlined, cacophonous backing track. On first listen, it all seems like a hodgepodge, a painting with too many clashing colors. However, repeat listening reveals the record's loose yet intriguing architecture.

Nowhere is that effect more evident than on the head-scratching opus "limiter." The song's first two and a half minutes are the audio equivalent of a car crash. Jasper takes a seemingly free-form drum track, distorts the ever-loving hell out of it, breaks it up into shards and lays it on top of a gritty synth drone. That destroyed beat fades out into a gently strummed acoustic guitar as Jasper's monotone vocal creeps in, revealing a surprise folk song hiding inside an industrial track. It's emblematic of a record determined to be itself, sometimes sacrificing order for a sense of endless possibility.

holding pattern is available at barkdog.bandcamp.com.