(03.10.07) James Holden’s DJ mix At The Controls (Resist) was one of the very clear musical highlights of 2006 for me, so I bought this CD of his own productions as soon as I happened upon it in my local music shop.
The music on The Idiots Are Winning is stunning. Holden’s mix CD gives an idea of where his head is at – the happy/sad electronica of older Aphex, Boards, and so on; the sometimes harsh but incredibly rich textures of Fennesz; and the good time dancefloor drive of bods like Petter, Paul Kalkbrenner and the like. So the music is in essence mid-tempo techno, but the breadth of sounds and gestures is way beyond “minimal.” Roaring waves of distortion swamp the mix in places, at other times crazy “Windowlicker” -style choirs freak the place out entirely, elsewhere still synth brass blares through immense reverbs, like a new-millennium dub of the Bladerunner soundtrack, and lo-fi recordings of found percussion clank alongside the crisp drum machine sounds. Throughout the album synth arpeggios chime and jostle along, keeping things moving as they’re mulched and dubbed a zillion ways.
There’s a strange irony that this will probably be labelled as “minimal techno” because, although the stylistic gestures are all there, this is such thoroughly animated and engaging music. Sure, it is based around loops, and in that sense is minimal, but Holden thoroughly pushes all of the sounds in his compositions to the limits in ways that had me laughing out loud with excitement.
The track listing may seem a little slight, given the material for the ten tracks basically amounts to six tracks: “Intentionally Left Blank” is predictably, shall we say, lacking in action; there are two fairly similar mixes of “Idiot;” and there are two interludes comprising of short, stripped-bare edits of other tracks on the CD. However, those six tracks are so damn impressive that it’s hard to feel disappointed.
The Idiots Are Winning is out now on Border Community. Buy it at Amazon.com.
