Taimela isn’t trying to recreate the 90s IDM and drum and bass golden era so much as he’s drawing a line from it to the present, letting those influences inform his melodic instincts without being consumed by them. There’s a lightness to how he carries all of that reference—it never feels like homework, never feels like pastiche. It just sounds like a producer who grew up on the right records and internalized them so completely that they became his own vocabulary.
Very thought out melodically, nostalgic at times, and beautifully crafted
Finland has a particular relationship with electronic music that rarely gets the credit it deserves. The same quiet introspection that runs through the country’s classical and folk traditions has found its way into a generation of producers who make IDM and ambient work that feels rooted in landscape and weather rather than dancefloors or scenes. Otto Taimela is one of the most versatile of them—a pianist, composer, sound designer, and producer based in Finland with a discography that refuses categorization, moving between avant-garde piano, breakbeat, ambient techno, and neo-classical composition across labels like SWIMS, Cold Blow, Ultraääni, Special Species Records, and Cudighi Records, the LA-based label run by Ben Van Howe that focuses on international psych, art pop, ambient, and electronic music. This is Taimela‘s second release on Cudighi following 2024’s A Life, and it’s the most coherent statement of his IDM-facing side yet.
Cheap Ingredients is a good IDM release and a genuinely cute one—cute in the sense that the sounds and melodies composed through this album are lovely, catchy, and beautiful to listen to. The album plays consistently well as a flow of old-school breakbeats and drum styles with beautiful pads and keys throughout. As uncanny as the cover looks, what appears to be two Mickey Mouse-like characters standing next to a palm tree, drawn in a deliberately naive hand, it doesn’t match the aesthetic of the music at all, which makes it strangely interesting. The music overall sounds very thought out melodically, nostalgic at times, and beautifully crafted.
The genre here sits closer to drum and bass IDM than anything else—not drill and bass, which is more aggressive and abstract in structure, and not liquid drum and bass, which is softer and more melodic in the conventional sense. This has an abstract structure to it while maintaining real warmth in the low end subs. “VCXO” is a prime example of good bass sub usage and chill, not too fast, not too slow, just good downtempo electronica. The melodies and atmospheres here hit somewhere between Roni Size‘s early drum and bass work and the melodic sensibility of Plaid, two reference points that don’t often share the same sentence but make complete sense here.
Standouts: “Glacier,” “New Life,” “Spell 3,” and “Formal Mass.” “Spell 3” is particularly hypnotizing in its ambience and loop, it recalls the old school Boards of Canada loops that take you off guard, the kind that don’t announce themselves as special until you realize you’ve been inside them for longer than you expected. “Bullfinch Nest” exposes beautiful vocal warble work coming in every four to eight bars, it sounds like a bird, or the reminiscence of one, and when the pads arrive alongside it the combination becomes catchy in a way that’s hard to shake. Whatever that sample is, it’s the character of the track. It recalls Aphex Twin‘s “Slow Bird Whistle” from the Peel Sessions in concept — not in sound, not in execution, but in the specific idea of a non-musical element becoming the personality of a piece. Very well done.
“Mysterious Thing” is a wonderful interlude, the vocal sample and record-rewinding effect being tossed into the playing melody is fantastic to listen to. It’s not turntablism—it’s something closer to the small, playful interludes that appeared on early Plaid releases, or the kind of moment that Mr. Oizo delivered on Analog Worms Attack (1999)—those brief, almost comedic left turns that humanize an otherwise electronic record. This would be the drum and bass version of that instinct, and it works perfectly.
The album grows on you with each listen. It really is hard to choose between tracks because the more time you spend with it the more it reveals. A golden egg of classic sounds and nostalgia, one of those releases that knows exactly what era it’s drawing from and has the skill to make it feel fresh rather than imitative. Taimela isn’t trying to recreate the 90s IDM and drum and bass golden era so much as he’s drawing a line from it to the present, letting those influences inform his melodic instincts without being consumed by them. There’s a lightness to how he carries all of that reference—it never feels like homework, never feels like pastiche. It just sounds like a producer who grew up on the right records and internalized them so completely that they became his own vocabulary. Cheap Ingredients is exactly what the title doesn’t suggest—carefully considered, melodically rich, and worth every return listen.
Cheap Ingredients is available on Cudighi. [Bandcamp]
