The Host

Irish electronic musician Barry Lynn first attracted notice in the mid-2000s through Planet Mu releases issued under the Boxcutter moniker. Those early tracks fused sharp-edged breakbeats and digital glitches with the weighty low-end pulse of grime and dubstep, prompting frequent references to the hybrid “breakstep” tag. By Boxcutter’s fourth album, The Dissolve (2011), the palette had grown smoother, incorporating vintage synth-funk and disco elements while occasionally veering into the hazy, tape-warped terrain of chillwave. Lynn introduced the Host alias in 2012 with a self-titled Planet Mu full-length that extended beyond the Boxcutter framework, incorporating the rapid rhythmic patterns of footwork alongside nostalgic nods to ’90s cyberspace aesthetics. He kept issuing Boxcutter EPs that probed the intersections of juke, U.K. garage, drum’n’bass, and IDM, yet returned to the Host project in 2015 for the sophomore album Esalen Lectures on Touch Sensitive Records and the EP Audience Science on Kinnego Records.