(06.03.07) Dial have really got it going on at the art-house-techno studio-floor
intersection. Over the last five years the Hamburg-based imprint have
covered minimal techno and house bases with different seasonings
distinguishing its toppings. Early full-lengths trafficked variously in
shades of abstract post-Parrish off-jazz melancholia (Lawrence’s s/t and
Absence of Blight), Mode-ish Detroit tech-noir (Carsten Jost’s You Don’t
Need a Weatherman…), and shards of shoegaze and neo-romantic mopery
(Pantha du Prince’s Diamond Daze). Now Berlin-based Efdemin looks set to
join der Klub, with his debut full-length largely flitting around between
these dusky colourings while adding a few of his own. Berliner Phillip
Sollmann apaprently studied music (in Vienna – ooh!), cultivating an
interest in more static forms (e.g. La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine,
Phil Niblock), so he’s no slouch. And like his label-mates, he may be a DJ,
but is decidedly not what he plays. Sollman’s smart techno is not
especially weird on top but distinctly wired at heart, tapered down
basslines and smart beats playing host to smoke and shimmer, ripples and
stabs. Efdemin stays clear of Pantha’s self-grooming sulk-zone, remaining
largely on the lightside, with sometimes an inscrutable speech sample
puzzle to pique. Freer-spirited, certainly, and less generically
cultivating ‘mystique,’ though without getting all uber-gloomy and
goth-veiled on you, mysterious ways are occasionally moved in, a touch of
creamy-dark dreamscape being whorled into the whirl of its sub-genre
worlds.
The artist’s skill lies partly in compositional development. Check: with
most house DJ-types, the elements of a track are usually primed to provide
early gratification. But Sollman invariably holds something back for a
middle section, or drives a track somewhere beyond the route
planner-indicated destination. Otherwise unremarkable house-fodder plodder
“Back To School” has its trackiness lifted by a slowburn ambient chord
coda. “Further Back” starts out all standard issue deep house pads but ends
up a-writhe with soft-acid neo-trance tendrils before heading for the
Detroit hills with a lush urban-futurism turbo-charge. On some tracks
Efdemin has more of a strut-cum-swagger, like on “Acid Bells,” which lurks
playfully at the trance-threshold with chiming (Dial-ers, like ringtone
obsessives, will have their chimes and bells!) steeldrum tones, but instead
of breaking out into full-on arpeggiation action, he key-switches into
minor-chord mist.
Efdemin overall ends up being a somewhat designed lo-emo hi-groove product
– a production that appeals to feet first with head a close second. Shame
“Intelligent” has already been hitched to Dance Music to create a tag for
another music from a different kitchen – one whose kinetics are less
obviously dance-friendly. So it’ll have to be “SDM,” with an “S” for smart,
sophisticated, savvy. That’s Efdemin.
Efdemin is out now on Dial. [Purchase
