Communion is the first As One album in more than a decade and it has certainly been worth the wait. This master reaffirms his rightful position in the annals of electronics with nine tracks of simply superb music. Profound, playful and a true listening pleasure, this is a shining example in the canon Degiorgio founded all those years back.
We appear to be living through a golden age for techno, a second golden age if you will. The 1990’s have loomed over the sound for nearly thirty years. Artificial Intelligence, Agenda 21, Planet E. These celebrated names not only forged machine music, they set a stratospherically high standard against which all other works would be judged and measured. Although it is difficult to compare this present time to those dizzily dazzling days, the growing quality of hi-tech funk is in no doubt.
De:Tuned, with its ten year anniversary series, has made 2019 a very special year for electronic music. The Belgium label, not content with such a productive twelve months, has drafted in one of the godfathers of British techno for his first As One album in more than ten years: Kirk Degiorgio.
“Absorption Spectra” gently introduces the double LP. Soft murmurings are bolstered by sparkling bright notes as a complex and heady piece of ambient immersion is unfurled. As One has always been one of Degiorgio’s more organic monikers with the UK musician using this nom de plume to explore a glut of styles. This latest collection is no exception. Tracks like “Downburst” trill with a palpable energy, glass-like keys superimposed on an epic backdrop, while “The Ladder” delves into the analogue textures that characterized Applied Rhythmic Technology as a label. There are moments where the LP harks back to the halcyon days of machine music, for instance the subtle acid burbles and clean lines of “Aimpoint.” Degiorgio wanders off the techno track at times and returns with sublime ambient depths, as in the stunningly immersive “Irimias” or the string-soaked beauty of “Emanation.” A more contemporary tone can be heard in the reductions of “The Specialist” or the broken patterns and morphing basslines of “We Are But Shadow.” And this is what Communion does, it absorbs the brilliant radiance of the past and reflects and refracts it through a modern lens.
Communion is the first As One album in more than a decade and it has certainly been worth the wait. This master reaffirms his rightful position in the annals of electronics with nine tracks of simply superb music. Profound, playful and a true listening pleasure, this is a shining example in the canon Degiorgio founded all those years back.
Communion is available on De:tuned.
