Chad Van Gaalen confounds expectations with a genre-smashing grab bag of instrumental oddities.

Though he’s always hinted at the more abstract side of his musical imagination, Chad Van Gaalen’s debut offering in his Black Mold alter ego still comes as something of a jaw-dropper. Cramming a seemingly endless stream of ideas into 19 instrumental tracks (not to mention another album’s worth and then some of bonus material, included as a download), Van Gaalen has melded everything from vintage modular synthscapes to IDM glitch, circuit manipulations, music concrete and video game sounds to stripped-down acoustics, presenting a veritable treasure trove of previously unexplored territory.

The album’s opening cut “Metal Spider Webs” is a wistful, relatively straightforward piece performed on cello, clarinet, bass and xylophone with only the subtlest of synthetic flourishes. It’s directly followed by the speaker-rattling static and minimalist bleeps of “Dr. Snouth,” quite likely the least human-sounding selection here. It’s difficult to discern if this track-listing strategy was intentional, but it serves well as a separate introduction to the organic and electronic textures working together throughout the remainder of the record.

If there are other patterns to be found on Snow Blindness is Crystal Antz, they reveal themselves only after multiple listens and even then may be decoded differently by each listener. “Tetra Pack Heads” spins along on a high-speed merry-go-round melody sounding like it was lifted straight from Katamari Damacy, peppered with xylophones and Squarepusher-style glitch. “Smoking Rat Shit” and “Fuck Ebay” also include hiccupping programming à la the left-field explorers of the Warp Records roster, yet while the ominous tones of the former brings to mind a slasher flick, the latter sounds more like a chaotically malfunctioning computer.

Several songs on Snow Blindness return to the meditative post-rock Van Gaalen introduced with “J.C.’s Head on the Cross” from 2004’s Infiniheart, providing some of this album’s best moments. On “Uke Puke,” field samples of jangled change and muted conversation float on top of delicate plucks of the song’s titular ukulele. “Wet Ferns,” the longest song at nearly six minutes, is another standout with its dreamlike tones, high-pitched twinkles and pinches of static. “Left Behind by the Digital Ships” is a slowly shifting soundscape in the vein of A Clockwork Orange’s classic score, while “Swimming to Food” sounds like an update on Brian Eno and David Bowie’s Berlin-era instrumentals. Finally, the title track starts off patiently with quiet, repetitive chimes that conjure a slowly cranked jack-in-the-box until an emotive acoustic guitar tune strums in and out over clicks, ticks and sputters.

Like Prefuse 73, Aphex Twin, Autechre or other prolific knob-twiddlers he may have taken inspiration from, Van Gaalen has given listeners a serious glut of material. However, returning to the Eno analogies, Snow Blindness can perhaps be most accurately compared to 1978’s Music for Films, offering up a smashing soundtrack for a movie that so far only exists in the musician’s mind.