Quantec :: Unusual Signals (Echocord)

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(07.08.08) It’s been a busy 12 months for Sven Schienhammer – the artist currently
known as Quantec, now riding the crest of something of a New Wave of
European Dub-techno (along with names like bvdub, Atheus, Haventepe, XDB,
Kabana, Hermetico, Dubatech, Severence, et al). After a stream of 12″s and
short-format insertions for Styrax, Meanwhile, and Smallfish, as well as
EPs on his own Shoreless Recordings and kindred spirit bvdub’s Quietus, his
latest outing sees a return to Mikkel Metal’s Echocord imprint. Here he pushes the dubtech-boat out even further for a 76-minute album of sub-aqueous and fog-bound post-techno with downtempo deep house tendencies and a miles-deep undertow. The Berlin past is ever-present, the whole
steeped in the tradition of Chain Reaction and Mille Plateaux – attended by the soft-industrial dub-pulse and cirrus trails of Fluxion and Porter Ricks, of Gas and Yagya. Quantec’s signals are, in fact, not that unusual, albeit re-configured. With 4/4 techno-pulse and hi-hat house-shimmy more of a given, the main sphere of creative operations lies in a Big Blue of submariner ambiance and a heady wooze of FX-ooze. With this kind of music, premised as it is not on taking liberties with structure, but on taking structure for granted, what fills the slots is crucial in a template that could almost be expressed as an equation:SYNTHMOTIF + KICK-PULSE + ECHOa/ECHOb/ECHOc [± HI-HAT] x µ = QUANTEC TRACK.

Quantec’s debt to sub-genre pioneers is worn on his sleeve, the opening tracks trafficking in modulating metallic synth stabs redolent of Substance and Vainqueur, billowing like clouds edged with a silver lining of static-y hiss, and that insistent hyper-compressed thump. The most obvious present point of reference is the even more prolific Modell/DeepChord/Echospace axis, but Unusual Signals is somehow a much sparer and more internal recording, resolutely more downbeat, more minimalist in musical means.Quantec’s textures are indeed a work of considerable art, but they rarely stray far from home, other than to idly dally with delay. It’s pretty much a case of WYHFIWYGT (what you hear first is what you get throughout). A default setting for a Quantec track emerges by midpoint, one with a slowed down jack dynamic and a topping of what is essentially ambient drone made fuzzy with a drizzle of reverb and delay. From opener “Amantita Muscaria” to halfway-housers “Yage” and “Panaleous,” this single-tenet creed is spread by Schienhammer, varied only to the extent it gets the thunk out of your face, either in part, as on the deep chill of “Iboga,” or in toto, as on the bulk of “2082,” on which great globs of musicized molasses dribble thickly lava-like back and forth across the soundfield, before the low-end kick cavalry return for a darkdrone-throned tech-processional finale.

Ultimately, there’s no point chiding Schienhammer for not doing what he
does not set out to do, since he does what he seems set on doing so
effectively. Quantec’s invariance and template-drivenness are evidently
part of a steadfastly held to mission statement. In terms of sub-genre,
Quantec does not seek to re-invent, more to refine and deepen, and lend a
different colour and texture, making ambiance the area where his take on
dub-techno finds more of a voice of its own. It is indeed a sound which is
appealing enough to be dwelt on, a zone deserving of due time to get
properly zoned-out in, though, for this listener, the mini-album/EP length
is a more apposite container for Quantec. Nevertheless, if you’re an adept
of BC/CR/DC transmissions, Unusual Signals, neither loud nor clear, but
distinctly deep and richly resonant, should definitely be picked up.

Unusual Signals is out now on Echocord. [Purchase]

Echocord

Quantec