(08.12.06) One of the many pseudonyms of Don and Roel Funcken, Quench has historically been their more “ambient” project, filled with delicately evolving pads and synth rhythms that have been freed from the chaotic churn of break-beat work. Caipruss, their fifth Quench record and second for n5md, finds them being pulled in. The beats break into the tracks, injecting jagged bands of funk and glittering shards of digital rhythm.
“Reap” uncurls like smoke, undulating to a slow internalized rhythm. Cymbals and percussion pads ring and tap in ever-complicating patterns while the slow evolution of the tones becomes a descending whistle of space noise that buries itself in a cone of beats. And never without any fuss or complication (this is Quench legacy, really: never any
fuss). The rhythms in “Octane” are tighter, like the scattered patter of fussy atoms or boiling water, and they play out beneath the languid curtain of slow-shift tones. “Caipruss” is heavily mechanized, filled with steamboxes and electrical conduits. Strangely melancholic in its muttering, “Caipruss” flirts with dark passions and caustic
wiretapping, but ultimately seems to be a song for dreamers than for heavy action. “Tive” lurches and stops, a cut-up marionette drummer who can’t quite control his own hands. A gurgling melody dances around the kit, trailing diaphonous silks like a sugar-stoned butterfly.
“Mmen” finds a slightly menacing tone and an echo box with which to threaten us. While these never terrify (separately or together), they make a half-hearted effort: the tone swells like the hood of a cobra and the shuffling vibrations of the beats match to an accelerated rhythm of your heart. “Matics” uncovers a concentration of the Funck brothers’ squiggly funk; dropped into the track, “Matics” becomes a wiggly, scratchy dance track — somewhere in the realm where the double-jointed and caustic can happily latch onto the groove. Steam-driven, “Mangle” resonates with the digitally corrupted bawl of a barnyard animal. Percolating perambulations dance around the braying sound like mice prancing about the feet of prize heifer with dangling udders.
While some of Funckarma’s work can get abstractly busy (the “must squeeze as much chaos and beat chicanery out of my available processor power as possible” style), Quench never raises its voice above a delicate whisper. The tracks of Caipruss are quietly deft, forcing you to submerge yourself in them. Even as they dart away from you.
Caipruss is out now on n5md. Buy it at Amazon.com.
