While there’s no shortage of dubby electronica to explore at the moment, few producers have such an understanding of tension, the confidence to make bold decisions (no one else gleefully undercuts their own basslines like TD does), and a balanced blend of stasis and activity.
About a year after their first vinyl collection, Topdown Dialectic returns to Los Angeles’ Peak Oil label for another compelling tour through their dubby and broken sound-world. TD doesn’t do a lot of what’s expected from contemporary electronic producers—like title their tracks and albums, give interviews, play out or release one hundred hours of radio mixes a month. What’s more interesting though is their commitment to their particular approach to arrangement, one that’s hard to pin down but undeniably distinctive. None of the pieces on Vol.2 or releases prior develop by systematically introducing elements or structured tracks for dramatic impact. There’s no breakdowns, chord changes or basslines maintaining a groove. Instead the TD house style is one that almost immediately introduces each component part and lets them spin around on a funky, lopsided axis. These mobiles are comprised of finely detailed and polished pieces, and the results hypnotic and seductive. Listening to them play through their uniform five-minute run-times it’s impossible not to be mesmerized and pleasantly disoriented as they un-spool and loop into themselves irregularly.
Vol.2 is recognizably a product of the same workflow and techniques of the first Peak Oil’s record, but results are considerably warmer and more accessible, losing the sometimes jerky and aggressive IDM edge. A1 immediately rains down bright, competing arps that contains more melodic content than as their discography previously. “A2” freezes what sounds like an intro from a Force Tracks-era Luomo into a romantic moment of breathy utterances and a quivering pad. And if TD’s vibe was previously that of a puckish trip-bully fucking with you while you’re high, this is their heartbroken side. “Baby don’t go” is intoned before the first third is over and there’s a cloud, sometimes wistful and often restless, that hangs over what follows. Only “B1” skates on the lip of sentimentality, threatening to drop into full Burialisms, just shy of blowing the cool on a delicate stepper. Elsewhere this uneasiness is just a hyperactivity low in the mix, stabs, woody percussion, cutting filters and pans jacking away beneath what appears to be tranquil face from afar.
The album eventually offers up some kind of serenity, albeit in a chemical form, on the final track. Channeling the disciplined tech-house rush of Theorem and Stewart Walker, “B4” teases a moment of familiar dancefloor tension until it’s become an almost unbearably strong distillation of euphoric melancholy, endlessly resetting itself. It’s wildly affecting. One hopes there’s more material to come from the TD vaults—this was apparently taken from the same session as the last album. While there’s no shortage of dubby electronica to explore at the moment, few producers have such an understanding of tension, the confidence to make bold decisions (no one else gleefully undercuts their own basslines like TD does), and a balanced blend of stasis and activity.
Volume 2 is available on Peak Oil.
