First in a series of postcards from the edge—a snapshot of Techno’s twilight zone of EPs/12″s.
First up, from the darker recesses of the ‘floor Raster Noton doesn’t reach, cerebral thumpers, Stroboscopic Artefacts, and questing curator Lucy, bring Chevel’s One Month Off EP. A reprise for Treviso-based Dario Tronchin, whose I EP inaugurated SA’s Monad series, though the Chevel sound is a deal more challenging here—‘built around the abstract themes of construction, starting with demolition and ending on perspective.’ A combo of thick kicks, clatter’n’skitter, and some expert knob twiddling playing with depth and space to mess with your perception. Four slabs of angular deconstructed technoid inquiries into texture, timbre, tone. Deep bleak depictions of urban ‘scapes with some stylistic crossover with bass music. All this, and the epithet ‘industrial’ not abused once.
Also forthcoming in May on SA is another 4-tracker, Terzo Giorno, from more traveled Italian Techno-logue, Donato Dozzy (Aquaplano reissue igloo-‘viewed here). With promise of ‘an EP of great textural dexterity, traversing the moving and the misanthropic,’ the only clips so far available give a taste of what is a typically heady brew, with one ambient swirl and three tech-shamanic throbbers. More Dozzy material also lands from a Voices From The Lake gig he and Neel did for The Bunker, who signed the tracks to their fledgling label—selected set segments tweaked back in their Rome studio issuing in Velo di Maya.
But a sideways step from here we find recent Dozzy collaborator, Dino Sabatini (Shaman’s Paths igloo-view), whose Mnemosyne 12″ is due in May on his Outis label. Having colluded with Dozzy for last year’s Journey Back to Ithaca, Dino finds a new sidekick in Tony Scott aka Edit Select—whose recent Phlox album for Prologue saw the pair’s first collaborative track, “Survivors Of The Pulse.” For the mythologically challenged, Mnemosyne was the personification of memory, daughter of Gaia and Uranus, and mother of the Muses, goddesses of the Arts, whose names the classical scholastically-inclined Sabatini borrows to adorn each of the EP’s three tracks.
Another intriguing EP comes from Drøp, whose Vasundhara drops on Arboretum—with a Dadub remix featuring on The Wire’s Rewired 10 April 2014. Drøp is sound designer Giuseppe Bifulco, who, we’re told, ‘focuses on sounds investigation and experimentation, not that much in an aesthetic meaning, rather than in a perceptual and sensorial one, considering the sound as a bundle of informations that deal with psycho-acoustic and music therapy.’ You might wish to by-pass the somewhat over-egged spiritual-shamanic pudding of the press blurb, and follow up on this more prosaic pointer—to an impressive production involving an array of sonorous textures mapped onto a widescreen kinetic sound field.
Next up, via France’s DEMENT3D comes further dscrd, an elusive bunch of Parisian producers—incidentally also with an SA Monad EP—whose Panopticon is as far from regulation issue dj tool Techno as you can get while retaining the genre tag. First release, Discordance, set the tone for their idiosyncratic sound, since when they’ve made something of a name for themselves with a blend of blown-out fuzzed’n’gruzz and sub-bass thrum, shuffling against a noisy backdrop with twitchy percussion and digital detritus; a distinctly live sound of textures shape-shifting with slivers of cyber-funk and tech-step abstraction—dub, glitch, techno, industrial, and drone all get a look-in as the EP unfolds. While on the DEMENT3D tip, in a more familiar headf*ck techno vein, co-owner Francois X, has his own Suspended in a Stasis Field EP out soon.
Another new label, Unknown Precept, who surveyed the field of grubbier Euro techno with The Black Ideal (incl. Ancient Methods, AnD, Mondkopf, Polar Inertia, Shifted, Svreca, Violetshaped), bring a first solo release from Italian mysterio man, Damaskin. His Unseen Warfare is four fetid pieces of clunking kinesis and torsions, clangorous churn and tech-mesmerism via shuffling off-beats and grubby monotone slammers.
On his Kaona EP for Rome’s Concrete it’s more of an outer limits minimal acid techno Damaskin peddles, with creeping serpentine 303 lines slithering around in insistent twisting, ever evolving and warping, building a feeling of disquiet in waves of eldritch atmosphere of shadowy dimensions and alien ‘scapes in an acid space odyssey—also with a more floor-oriented Cassegrain remix.
Debut 3-tracker, Ramayana Chant, on Eshu from unknown Dutch act J&L includes a nice remix from hypnagogue techgnosist, Abdulla Rashim—a good pretext for a quick pointer to a great run of 12”s on his own Abdulla Rashim label, last of which was Aksum (and note, an album, Unanimity, due to hit in May).
The Det Stora Ovasendet LP from Swedish duo Michel Isorinne and Varg rejoicing under nom de disque D.Å.R.F.D.H.S. has been given the remix EP treatment by Glasgow’s Clan Destine. While Isorinne takes the lead with big swathes of meditative drone’n’space, and new old-skool synth-fetishist Andreas Tilliander shakes some analogue acid action, Varg teams up with fellow Northern Electronics producer Acronym (who has some great 12”s of Dimensional Exploration) for some quality bleep’n’deep techno.
Finally, this month sees the inauguration of Divergent Ways, a new project which lives up to its name in several respects: first, no artist name, it acts rather as a collective; second, starting point is a quote from artist James Turrell about lighting and vision; and last, the music itself, each production drawing linkages between visual impact and sound—‘music as a visual manifestation.’ The concept envisages the work of an artist translated to musical form for each release, first of which, First Light Part One, is out now. A rich brew indeed, with an abundance of ethnic (“Afrum 1”) and gothic classically-inflected (“Prado”) instrumental loops over unkempt 4/4 kicks and broken beats.
Latest albient mix, Dalliance #7, features some of these artists and releases.
