Boulderdash manage to hone their vintage IDM skills, finding new ways to thread emotive melodies, all the while utilizing hardware to create soft sound escapes for background listening.
Sweden’s Daniel Skaborn and Hans Möller (aka Boulderdash)—one of the burgeoning IDM producers in the late 90s and early 00s—continue to manipulate sound inside quaint, melodic time capsules. Pro Time Killers (Datadoor, 2016) pushed more breakbeat oriented electronics, now we see the duo displaying sparse synthesizer tones on vinyl. This album follows up where Social Life Artificial seemingly left off.
The relaxed theme, subtle melodic construct and downtempo percussion may come across as old hat. Is it because of the brittle melodies? The smooth polyrhythm’s? The brisk, muted bleeps? Whatever the case, this mini-album segues from tranquil bumpier moments (“Scratched back”) to fragrantly chilled streams (“FM reception at 17pc”.) It’s tracks like “Clayroom” where the Boulderdash sound maneuvers about gracefully. Dusty, modular chords dance around rugged slow motion beatwork—a lost Boards Of Canada mood floats by, and it all fades away. For those who have not followed the duo’s carefully timed audio work, newcomers may find these clean, calm and contained electronic bits simply too polished. To these ears, the Boulderdash manage to hone their vintage IDM skills, finding new ways to thread emotive melodies, all the while utilizing hardware to create soft sound escapes for background listening.
Just over 3.26 light years from home, Boulderdash are here to stay—producing comfortable pitter-patter harmonies in their Audionaut studio.
Just some parsecs away from home is available on DSM / Audionaut Capsule.
