The gauges indicate Electro from the outset. Snapping snares pulse through bass and warbling synthlines.
It’s a strange thing. Sometimes, not all the time but some, I’ll attach a location to a piece I’ve written. I can remember certain pieces knocked together in canteens waiting for meetings, others on high speed trains, others on kitchen tables. I can still recall writing about Cultivated Electronics second record, a four tracker of various artists. I was living in Dublin, sat at some brash glass dining table in the sitting room. It was 2007 and Ireland was a land far from what it is now. Two cars. Two homes. Wads of cash and the flow of excess. Turn the clock forward six years and the small island nation is a very different place. I’ve left, and so has the money and work. The replacement is austerity and the tight belt. But, reports are getting better and attitudes are becoming more positive (maybe.) Cue the above record reference. One of the stand out artists of the Cultivated Electronics EP was Junq. For CE he delivered a tough acid edged Electro number. But since then the UK artist has been off radars, an vinyl austerity. Nevertheless, maybe this Londoner thinks that times are a-changing too. He now soldiers forth with not just a new EP but a new label: Art Mechanical.
The gauges indicate Electro from the outset. Snapping snares pulse through bass and warbling synthlines. Late night sci-fi moods ghost across “Neutron Harmonics,” pulses reverberating into the ether. Acid begins to invade near the midway point, the track meandering around those solid beats for some seven minutes. That clipped whip of drum follows into “Nebular Structures.” 303 coils are bellowed skyward, rippling with contained aggression. Tough and brutal. The closer, “Cosmology,” begins in a starker fashion to its predecessors. Those orbs of Acid are again molded, bulging and receding, until shortened snares descend. The track looms, menacing before unveiling itself as a deep and transforming work of textured electronics.
It will be interesting to see what form Art Mechanical will take. Will Junq use it as his own releasing platform or expand with new artists? Vinyl is set to be the format, but digital will follow. I’ve reviewed a lot of new labels and the crucial time seems to be the early days. After one release some imprints dry up, some after four or five. Based on what Junq has set out with Art Mechanical Cog 001 I hope that this fledgling label has a lot more to say, and a lot more to release.
Art Mechanical Cog 001 is available on Art Mechanical.
