Sigilkore

What it is

Sigilkore is a SoundCloud tag from around 2020, attached to a corner of the underground rap internet where the cover art was all occult sigils and the beats were made from reversed and pitch-shifted material. Bloodhound and Kamiyada+ are the names most often given for it. Musically it came out of plugg and its darker offshoots, keeping the detuned bell melodies and the 808 writing and running large parts of them backwards. The compositional consequence is worth stating plainly: a reversed cymbal or vocal swells into each downbeat, so the listener hears the bar arriving from its end rather than starting at its front. The backbeat then refuses to settle on 2 or 4, and the 808 answers in runs of consecutive sixteenths.

What it sounds like

Reversed, detuned and soaked. Bells and plucks from stock plugg kits, tuned 20 or 30 cents flat and doubled an octave up. A long-glide 808 with the decay past two seconds. Cymbals, vocals and whole bars played backwards and used as risers into every bar rather than once a section. Vocals are pitched down a couple of semitones, doubled, and buried under reverb until the words go. There is usually a layer of tape-style pitch drift over the whole thing, applied to the bounce rather than to individual parts, so the drift moves everything together. Hats are dry and thin against all of it.

Key elements

• The reverse swellA reversed cymbal or vocal on the a of 4, rising into the next downbeat. It happens every bar rather than every eight, which is the structural difference from ordinary trap.
• 808 runsThree or four consecutive sixteenths, gliding, arriving in places the ear was not preparing for. The 808 is the lead instrument as much as the bass.
• A backbeat that will not landThe snare avoids 2 and 4 entirely, taking the e of 3 and the and of 4 in one bar and the and of 2 and the e and and of 4 in the next. Nothing anchors the bar except the swell.
• Detuned bellsA three-note bell figure 25 cents flat, doubled an octave up and delayed by 30 milliseconds. The tuning error is what stops this sounding like ordinary plugg.
• Pitch drift on the masterSlow wow applied to the whole bounce so the drums and the melody go out of tune together. Applied per track it just sounds broken.

How to get them

• Reverse the bounce, not the samplePrint the last bar of your loop to audio, reverse the whole bar, and place it so it ends on the downbeat. Reversing individual one-shots gives you a riser; reversing a bar gives you the melody arriving backwards under it.
• 808A sine with a two second decay, glide at 100 milliseconds, distorted with a soft clipper and then high-passed at 40Hz so the runs stay articulate. Write the runs as one held note with pitch bends rather than as separate hits.
• BellsAny stock plugg bell, tuned 25 cents flat, layered with the same patch an octave up and 30 milliseconds late. Put a long hall on it and high-pass the return at 600Hz.
• Move the snare off 2 and 4Program the backbeat anywhere except the second and fourth beats and keep it there for the whole track. It sounds wrong for about four bars and then it becomes the groove.
• Wow on the masterA tape emulation with the wow depth around 8 percent and the rate under 1Hz, on the master bus. Everything drifts together, which reads as a worn cassette rather than as a broken plugin.

Reference points

Bloodhound, Kamiyada+ and the SoundCloud sigilkore tag from around 2020, sitting next to plugg and dark plugg and drawing on the same stock bell kits. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.