Save The Robots delivers a highly infectious dosage of sliced and diced electronic mayhem merging leftfield rhythmic acrobatics that fans of mid-era Autechre, Richard Devine and Somatic Responses will certainly appreciate.
An expressive electronic assault of the senses
Dfaniks presents his second release with Errorgrid—following the Centipede EP from July 2020—and we agree with the description that Save The Robots is a “powerful 11 track album taking layered and explosive styles to the next level.” Little did we know about the Mexico City-born / New York-based musicians’ obsession with robotics as humanity struggles and continues to adapt to technological control. Save The Robots is an expressive electronic assault of the senses, to say the least.
Nonetheless, this album delivers an assortment of hard-hitting broken beats and shuffling rhythmic movements—akin to what Autechre achieved with Gantz Graf back in the day (Warp, 2002 to be precise)—but don’t let the many years between Gantz Graf and Save The Robots deter you from examining this album further. Each track is punctuated with attention to exquisite detail, slithering percussive jolts (“Skunk” is a prime example), and disjointed glitch bits and bytes smash together like a stellar collision. The opening cataclysmic and mechanical noises of “Replikka” sets the stage for these robotic monsters to take over the landscape. As the album progresses, one can find subdued melodies buried deep in its disheveled fabric—ref. “Artick Ghost” and the blissful “Nazguf” closing—and yet Dfaniks manages to create his own signature composed of tangled electronics, shapeshifting sonic debris, and carefully strewn sound design (ref. “272727” and “Teerator”). Richard Devine influences can’t be ignored either—the abstract post-industrial modular soundscapes on tracks like the fantastic “Vrest,” “Koxxpflet,” and “Plastik Crisis” flicker about with utter precision.
Save The Robots delivers a highly infectious dosage of sliced and diced electronic mayhem merging leftfield rhythmic acrobatics that fans of mid-era Autechre, Richard Devine and Somatic Responses will certainly appreciate.
Save The Robots is available on Errorgrid. [Bandcamp]
