David Ferguson rewinds Piedmont (originally released in September 2009) to investigate further its alluring polyphonic arpeggios, spooky ambience and DSP trickery. Find out, if you haven’t already, how Reklein’s command of mixing the subtlety of beats, rhythmic noise and emphasis on chopped-up layers takes over the sonic scenery.
[Release page] The first track on Piedmont is simply titled “Intro.” Off to a funky start – it heads off with slowly yet ever increasing build of space-echo percussion, square waves and atmospherics. The sound Reklein so quickly built is then stripped back down to the rhythmic minimal again.
“Cambric” begins with an epically roaring, reverberating lead that carries us through the first half. Then in comes some wonderfully warm, dramatic strings that sound slightly overdriven, so as to give them that extra crunch. Barring the beats, it would sound very much like a sinister film score. Reklein’s command of mixing the subtlety of their beats (not just “beats” but rhythmic noise) and the epic feel of the melody is definitely on display here. “Larson” uses a somewhat similar formula – but with even more emphasis on the chopped-up beats. The beat remains heavily syncopated, re-triggered, glitched and so on until the strings come in at 1 minute in. 20 seconds later, a beautiful yet simple waveform sounds as if it’s “dialing” us into the track – which remains faithful to the sound they have thus established. With its spooky ambience, you feel as if you are taking a late night walk through some desolate woods – with just enough light to keep pressing forth.
The fourth track “Cassidy” is a powerful track that grabs you with Angelo Badalamenti-like strings, simple bassline, polyphonic arpeggios a la Orbital and a bad-ass half-time beat with delay to drive it all forward. Reklein are great at unifying their sound into a cohesive unit.
“Harland” begins with an organ, and heavily enveloped synths and alternating washes and claps of white noise go off. A couple minutes in, an 808 style beat kicks in – and some funky, wonky electro a la mid-90s Detroit; then it rapidly switches into a battle of the white noise sounds, and by 4 minutes in – ties it all together again to ride out. One of the most upbeat tracks on Piedmont is found in “Sinke.” Heavy tremolo and double-time closed hi-hats begin a dreamy, chopped-up headnodder, before cranking up the DSP trickery and drums even more in the 2nd half.
The music becomes a bit more lucid with the impressive “Robb.” Ethereal bells, pulsing drone b-line, and Reklein’s bugged out boom bap beats, leads us into a great analog synth lead solo that soars and sustains until they take the track into heavily panned, dubby territory – complete with James Brown “unh!” sample. Despite definitely being hypnotic and relaxing, “Cartwright” passionately plays out like a lovely musicbox filled with emotion. “Michno” starts off slightly dissonant with some nice punchy drums. The hypomania induced when Reklein changes-up the tune almost entirely at 1′:45″ is what will really draw the listener in. Although this section is quickly assembled into an elaborate and bass-heavy electro meets grime type jam, it’s rinsed out for our listening pleasure, then cleverly literally blown to bits with what sounds like bitrate “crushing.” A nice finish.
Piedmont received the remix fix in May 2011 with alterations by the likes of Randomform, Dharmatronix, Sonny Hancock, R_Garcia, Fader Vixen, Artificial Reality, Logickal and label-head citizenGreen (also out now on High Grade Media.
Piedmont is out now on High Grade Media. [Release page]
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