(August 2010) Glasgow based Mighty Robot Recordings has been pretty quiet since Junior Rafael’s Darkroom Traxx II. Finally, as the days once more begin to shorten, the Scottish imprint returns with a fresh release and a new artist to add to the roster. Janko Bartelink aka Hadamard has released on Bunker, Transient Force as well as lending tracks to Solar One Music. For Mighty Robot Bartelink has brought together eight tracks under the heading Studio Gangster.
Hadamard has tweaked the common minimal electro sound. He maintains the bare bones approach but adds industrial and sparse electro funk elements. The engine starts this 12inch record with the brief and eponymous “Hadamard” before trademark beats drop in the form of “Rollin’ On Chrome.” The track has a dark, isolated electro shadowing as sheets of snare bisect the solitude of clinical synth chords. Bartelink’s claws look like they are out in full for this 12″, with rigid coils of cold intense electro spilling from the speaker cones. He creates an unease and blends it with a familiar beat to ensnare the listener into his eclipsed audio den. Samples are employed throughout a number of pieces, introducing a context before Hadamard takes the helm. The curtains are opened a little for “Touch The Floor,” blending funk tones with deeply vocodered lyrics. The B-Side opens in similar style to its forerunner, a snippet sample piece, before Bartelink dims the lights for the squalid electro onslaught of “I Ain’t Having That.” The vocals have a Clarence G motif to them, early hip hop notes depicting a good ole fashioned urban dystopia. The vocoder is contorted and convulsed for “The Payback” before a barrage of distorted 707 beats force their way in for a dark floorfiller. The mini album is brought to a close with the short-lived “Studio Gangster,” a final sample piece of Blaxploitation mixed with terse beats.
Hadamard’s tracks have a primal quality to them, stripped back to electro fundamentals similar to the likes of DJ Stingray or Gosub but with a generous nod to Aux 88. He takes elements of Detroit, Electro, Industrial, Breakbeat and Hip-Hop, shrouding the lot in a dense sinister fog. The record has echoes of Imatran Voima’s Welfare State of Mind but with an added levels of industrial gloom. Bartelink, with his use of samples, constructs his own exploited cityscape with synthesizer and drum machine; a conurbation of criminal chains, inchoate eyes and dingy brown skies. ‘Studio Gangster’ emulates the grandiose of the gangsta image, but uses cold shades and hard lines to produce his etching. Bartelink pours aural charcoal on the glamour of the of hip hop hero, harking back to the cold streets and the unjust social strata that produced the attitude and sound of the studio gangster.
Studio Gangster is out now on Mighty Robot.
