Tim Koch returns after nearly a decade-long hiatus from releasing music to bring us Spinifex, 17 tracks of melodic, slightly wonky IDM. A cohesive and massively accomplished collection of beautifully put-together songs that will satisfy any IDM-head in need of a fix.
New music from Tim Koch has been scarce since the heyday of the early 2000s, when he released albums like Faena and Islandtones, contributed to compilations, and had his originals remixed by the cognoscenti of the scene: perennial Igloo favorites like Proem, Hrvatski, and Mr. Projectile. This album’s appearance is made all the more surprising by its release formats: digital download and Sony Minidisc.
Sony stopped manufacturing Minidisc players in 2013, having largely failed in another of their perpetual attempts to own a vertical slice of our media consumption from the content down to the physical medium (BluRay won, but hey, remember Betamax? MemoryStick?). But perhaps the throwback is apropos, as Minidisc was the chosen format of Mike Cadoo’s n5MD label, who released Koch’s Mine is Yours remix collection back in 2002. CPU Records label head Chris Smith said when I asked about the release, “I always said I would do a MiniDisc release, the Gescom MD release on Skam being a favorite of mine. Although it is now impossible to get pre-recorded MiniDiscs manufactured, I stock-piled new ‘old stock’ MDs from eBay over the course of a couple of years.”
Compared to Koch’s output from that time, Spinifex presents a similar aesthetic—largely consisting of uplifting melodies and intricate, diced-up percussive elements—but displays a breadth of stylistic influences that reflect the frenzied evolution that’s happened in the wider aural landscape over the last decade. The eight minute long opener “Bloom” for example, begins with metallic clanging that’s soon revealed to be part of a lurching trip-hop groove as acoustic and electronic elements weave in and out. It’s not until past the half-way mark that the featured singer, Beth Keough, makes her entrance with a sliced-up, reversed vocal sample. It’s a gorgeous affair, with enveloping layers of unintelligible vocalization, synthesized bass, and processed guitar.
While there are other tracks in this vein, the Adelaide resident shows his versatility too, veering from chiptune blips (as on “Fopera” and “Fragmemory”) to dub-techno (“Rolecall”) and hyper-bpm workouts (“Underneath.”) There’s a lot of ground covered—unlike Faena, which also marked 17 tracks but alternated longer, fully-developed pieces with shorter, 60-90 second long sketches, Spinifex stretches its wings and gives each mood ample space to breathe. Oddly though, in several cases it feels like some constraint of time holds Koch captive: the swelling, majestic “Sawasatellite” for example cuts off abruptly as it’s winding down, and the cheekily-named “Miller Lowlife” gets a rude fade-out just as its jazzy drum workout seems like it’s really about to take off.
But these are pretty minor quibbles against what’s really a cohesive and massively accomplished collection of beautifully put-together songs that will satisfy any IDM-head in need of a fix.
Spinifex is available on CPU.
