(06.03.05) Painless by The Connection Machine is one of the Down Low label’s most recent album releases. It’s also well over ten years old. Like 154’s Strike (released through Delsin) that came before it, this is another of those albums that, for one reason or another, never came to fruition at the time of its original completion. The Connection Machine is Natasja Hagemeier and Jeroen Brandjes. They met Carl Craig in 1994 and sent him a demo. The result of this was a 12′ release that, to this day, is regarded as something of a gem in the critically acclaimed Planet E catalogue. There were several other releases both before and after this (on U-TRAX in particular) but, due to personal circumstances, Jeroen and Natasja had to cease recording in 1996 and until now, no further Connection Machine product was released. Much of the material presented on Painless was due to be released back then as an album through Planet E but for reasons unknown, it never happened. One can only wonder what might have been.
Painless is a bold sci-fi odyssey offering a devastatingly moody and mostly optimistic rather than dark or brooding vision of the future via its astoundingly deep, warm acid house, ambient and Detroit techno journeys. Technology and science fiction are clearly something of a passion of Jeroen and Natasja, evident through track names like “Password Session,” “Avatar Shopping” or “Perception Fuse,” to say nothing of the striking artwork on the album sleeve: an inversed, squared version of the Microsoft Windows Media-Player logo. The Painless page on the Down Low website clearly states that it is an anti-Microsoft statement and goes on to recommend abandoning a certain mega-corporations’ web-browser for Firefox when browsing the site. Almost every track on the album features a vocal sample apparently culled from one science fiction source or another. Some are incidental: “Confused. This confusion has been transmitted to you” (on “Perception Fuse”), “Something in our minds” (on “Chemistry Cosmos”) or the indistinct murmuring conversation in “Password Session,” but most form the very bedrock of the tracks: “If you’re afraid the dream goes away…” (on “Avatar Shopping”); “Harmonic resonance, from the neutrino clouds” (on “Harmonic Resonance”); “Forces, out of this world” and “You are the key to their power on this planet,” (on “Some UFO’s Picked Us Up”).
There’s a thoughtfully arranged and nicely constructed progression into deeper and deeper moods running through the first four tracks of Painless that established the tone of the album perfectly. “Blue Genes Copyshop” sets the retro/futuristic scene with neon drone sand synths, computer bleeps and hi-hat dusted rhythms. The highly charged “Harmonic Resonance” evokes the seminal early ART releases by Balil and Atypic with its edgy strings, and “Connect Me” is a thundering juggernaut of driving beats and rattling, sawing keys all based around its central sampled robotic vocal sample. This initial descent into the murky depths of The Connection Machine concludes upon arrival in the “Chemistry Cosmos.” The longest and arguably most intense piece on Painless, it’s a bewildering, hallucinogenic combination of piercing synths, pummeling beats, whirling vortices of shimmering effects and, in the closing few moments, a relentlessly looped, fluted bleep motif.
The Connection Machine shines brightest when embarking upon more ambient, atmospheric journeys. The stellar “Password Session” is one of the finest and most immersive tracks on Painless, it’s deep, hushed and expertly programmed 303 squelches conjuring panoramic imagined vistas of futuristic cities under deep blue night skies: vast, chrome plated parallels illuminated by passing vehicles and reflected neon lights. “I’m sure you have some kind of a deep and insightful human plan that I can’t understand,” in tones a blank female voice in “The Primer’s Mite,” a cinematic travelogue of journeys over and through such imposing future spaces. The aptly named, lumbering “Sticky Bits” is immersed in gluey splurges of heavily modulated 303 squelch, “Avatar Shopping” evokes the chaos of a crowded plaza… the highlights of Painless are myriad.
Bound together thematically by it’s retro/futuristic and sci-fi sensibilities, Painless could almost be called a concept album if it weren’t so refreshingly free form and devoid of pretension, and it’s unlikely that a better techno album will be released in 2005. The Connection Machine welcomes you to the future of the 20th Century.
Painless is out now on Down Low Music.
