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I once read a liner note quote from a musician who asserted that music should never be taken for granted and listened to in the background- it should always be the center of one’s mental focus. For some reason I remembered that quote a couple months ago and found myself only listening to music when I could afford to shift my full attention and fixate on the compositions head-on. It’s not a bad mantra to live by- however, those several weeks made me forget that not all sound should be experienced in the same way. I had sat down with Din-ST’s yamu d’din a few times and while I liked a lot of it, I could tell I was missing something. It wasn’t until one day I was simultaneously working on two projects in different rooms, but still needing to listen to the album a few more times and be able to hear equally in both locations, I gave the volume knob a full twist. I can only imagine the rest of the building sustained the same undeniable urge to recklessly flail about…or, at the very least, to flail me recklessly for sonically assaulting their walls and ceilings with tidal waves of primordial funk for hours.
Din-ST’s debut album straddles two universes. With one foot in the Miami-concrete mentality of the Schematic Nation and the other knee-deep in rave-core abandon, this is over 50 minutes of nu-skool body rock. The construction and the sentiments within are raw, jumping around in your basal ganglia on a pogo stick, but the problem I had listening to yamu d’din on headphones was that I didn’t want the sound inside me- I wanted to be inside the sound. Electro-breakbeats, 250lb granular-synthesized bass bombs, and new wave flashbacks calcify into a Borg-like force deserving of the wall of sound it spawns. From the 4-through-the-floor “Straight into Tokyo” to the brown noise festival “Take verithing,” this record needs to be played at least 27.8% louder than you listen to any of your other records. Even the haunting “U MAKE ME” sounds best when its broken horns and vocal calls reverberate off the walls a few times before boring holes in your dome with their melancholic stabs.
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o9’s Church of the Ghetto P.C. is an entirely different trip. It is an exploratory journey through tribal grooves, introspective minimalism, tech-noise tantrums, and soulful downtempo reflections, and with each track assigned a color instead of a title [“Terminal Red,” “Terminal Yellow,” “Terminal Green,” “Terminal Silver,” etc], Jesse Legg allows the music to speak for itself rather than impose programmatic influence.
Having only appeared on a handful of singles and compilations, there has been a cloud of mystery surrounding the o9 project, even though no amount of single-track offerings could remotely prepare anyone for the experience of listening straight through this 11-track symphony. Considering the strength of his prior releases, it is impossible to accuse o9 of holding back, but for this album, he certainly opened the floodgates.
In many respects, this album is a history lesson, deftly navigating early techno sensibilities while infusing them with current ideas and visions. However, this isn’t a mere act of show and tell- Jesse’s command over his craft is undeniable and there never is a question of what he could have or should have done with the music- like an axiom, it simply is and only can be. An effective trait in this music is his tremendous patience- not always giving in right away, but making the listener search a bit for the break they are looking for or the climax they seek. The alleyways are darker in these compositions than in his previous work, but those willing to step through the twisted metal, broken glass, and smoldering cinders will find a new favorite book of hymns to sing from again and again.
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Din-ST’s yamu d’din and o9’s Church of the Ghetto P.C. are both OUT NOW on Asphodel/Schematic Records.
