Ikin harnesses various trajectories, folding early ’80s industrial and no wave into techno’s pulse, dub’s low end, and eerie Carpenter-esque menace. Drones loom and static sparks in these unheimlich maneuvres; minimal beats and synth draped in queasy ambience.
Half a decade as half of Solo Andata, and Kane Ikin is alone, his musical mood darkened, more hermetic and isolationist. Following the trajectory of Warehouses and Circular Tip, Modern Pressure finds him traversing more unsettled territory on a more extended dérive. Though it comes fuelled by personal hardship—chill penury compelling the selling of his gear to keep the door wolf-free, it makes for even more compelling listening, as from a pared back stack come tauter downbeat reductions, writhing with urgent kinesis.
Ikin harnesses various trajectories, folding early ’80s industrial and no wave into techno’s pulse, dub’s low end, and eerie Carpenter-esque menace. Drones loom and static sparks in these unheimlich maneuvres; minimal beats and synth draped in queasy ambience, field recordings laced with electro-acoustic filigree, chords in search of lost light, rhythm seeking regularity. Driven along the lost highway of “Partial,” “Crosstalk” opens a Pandora’s Box of eerie atmos over a dread shuffle beat. “Tap Tap Collapse” wraps glowering synths in film-y grain dissolved into bass shudder and crooked rhythmic inflections. “Smoke Hood” gets the motorik running on a dark-side drive, pressure mounting in a pealing, chiming crackling barrage. Dubstep growls and electro pricks beneath the skin of tracks like “Auto Dialler” and “Haze Shimmer,” though more avant tonal tricks are turned. A subtle cinemascopic and sound design sensibility works its way beneath and between the bass churn and percussive heft of “Pulp” into the nervy buzzing non-closure of “Closer Closer,” evidenced throughout in Ikin’s deployment of caustic timbres and obliquely malevolent harmonic material, shunning more obvious noise strategies to do his damage.
All in all, Modern Pressure makes for a nicely genre-cidal variant in Type‘s creeped out electronica strand—an angsty peer for Pye Corner Audio’s Black Mills and Vatican Shadow’s Religious Icons. Close to snapping at any moment, its broken machine mood music might just be the soundtrack to the soul of Modern Man 2016.
Modern Pressure is available on Type (via bleep, Juno, Norman, boomkat).
