DeepChord :: Presents EchoSpace: The Coldest Season (Modern Love, CD)

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(09.16.07) Deepchord are Rod Modell and Mike Schommer. Since 2000, the pair have been
releasing their own brand of minimal dub techno. Their sound has been
compared to that of Maurizo and Basic Channel, also similar to the tech
ambient releases on Amploule. The partnership formed their own sound, taking
influences from dub techno and elements of their native Detroit. In 2000
they established the Deepchord label to get their unique sound out.
Deepchord put out a few releases on some small independent labels such as
SYNTH, Octal and Hierophant Records. The duo’s found new ears with their
welcomed ‘Vantage Isle’ on Echospace[Detroit], another self created imprint.
Recently the guys have been picked up by Modern Love, part of the Boomkat
recordstore. Now the Deepchord has an audience with Deepchord presents
Echospace: The Coldest Season.

The album decompresses into sound, Deepchord opening their shuttle bay doors
and hazily gazing over a new world of ambient sound. “First Point of Aries”
is the premier sound to hit the explorers. Ebbs of electronics slowly rise
and shimmer. Echoes are reverberated, resonance repeated before a slight
beat enters this abstract encounter. The same showered fuzz makes its way
into “Abraxas,” yet the minimal techno aspect plays a greater role than in
the first piece. The terrain changes with “Ocean of Emptiness.” Deepchord
drop spirals of sound into chasmic pits, recording the knocks along the way.
The sounds are claustrophobic and amazingly subterranean, a sonorous odyssey
across uncharted caverns. Deepchord lead the listener ever further into
unknown territory, mixing ambient tones with minimal beats. “Aequinoxium” is
a thirteen minute work of scratched echoes stumbling over one another,
rebounding off themselves in gentle electronic collisions of synthesized
music.

“Celestialis” goes in a different direction to its predecessors. The ambient
tones are still there, but the sound is much clearer and recognisable. With
this work, Deepchord are turning more to a minimal tech sound; yet they are
still keeping it abstract and other world. The track even has a break. The
chords start to develop a new warmth and energy as “Sunset” gives clean
synthlines amidst crackling electronics. The guys build up the piece, adding
little changes here and there and working a real power through the track.
The techno line seems to have now been established, with “Elysian” giving
that same Detroit influenced sound. The guys return to less stable ground
with the ambient “Winter in Seney” before finishing the album with, dare it
be said, the playful “Empyrean.”

Deepchord have produced a work of wonderful, atmospheric music. Sometimes
unsettling, sometimes ear opening, the Detroit denizens have made an album
that few others, in these days of electronic music, are attempting. The
Deepchord sound is not just ambient, it takes influences from techno and
reworks them to suit its needs to create something different yet familiar;
perfect music for the coldest season.

Presents EchoSpace: The Coldest Season is out now on Modern Love. [Purchase]

Modern Love

Deepchord