(08.18.08) Set up less than a year ago, Tympanik Audio based in Chicago, USA has already established an active release schedule of consistently high quality dark electronic music from a range of new and already established artists. With new signings regularly appearing it is already home to names such as Totakeke, Displacer, Stendeck, new signing ESA (Electronic Substance Abuse), Pneumatic Detach, Flint Glass, Subheim, Endif, and Autoclav1.1 along with an impressive list of newcomers.
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Autoclav1.1 :: Love No Longer Lives Here (CD)
Love No Longer Lives Here is UK artist Tony Young’s third album and first for Tympanik Audio. Having previously released the You Are My All and More and Visitor Attractions albums on Crunch Pod Media in 2005 and 2006 respectively, Young’s Broken Beats for Broken Hearts remix album of previously released album tracks was released by Hive Records earlier this year. As Visitor Attractions represented a refinement in Young’s recordings to a smoother, more rounded sound, Love No Longer Lives Here marks a further progression down this route with the ambient, experimental and industrial/noise aspects becoming the focus of his music. If You Are My All and More represents the prototype of the Autoclav1.1 sound, Visitor Attractions and Love No Longer Lives Here chart the progression of that sound as it matures and is refined, the edges smoothed and Young continues to develop as an artist. It is also the first of Young’s albums not to feature a set of remixed album tracks by notable names on the dark electronic music scene.
The consistent factors in Young’s music are sharp precise rhythms and swathes of ambient texture, often with an almost orchestral quality. Even amongst all the smooth tones and breaks Young can’t resist the occasional deviation from the theme; on this album that comes in the form of the grinding guitar chords of “All Long Black Spirals” and “We Shatter Sometimes” but even they are relatively restrained and in keeping with the content of the rest of the album compared to some of his previous contributions. If anything, Love No Longer Lives Here goes further down the IDM route than its predecessor. The beats are still sharp and precise but less crunchy and distorted than in the past, the ambient backdrop even more cinematic and orchestral than before. Opening with the sombre piano of “Casually Losing Selected Memories” and the gospel blues enhanced “All of You,” Young’s third album is steeped in lush textures and tones, infused with clean breaks and is in sometimes reminiscent of a more upbeat, IDM influenced version of Alan Wilder’s Recoil project with its dark overtones. The precise urgency of the breaks and the darkly gripping atmospheres of tracks like “Tiny Matters,” “This Stranger Hope” and “Trails without Pathways” are captivating.
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Endif :: Carbon (CD)
Like labelmate Autoclav1.1, American musician Jason Hollis (aka Endif) released his first two albums as Endif in 2005 and 2006 – Meld for Sonic Mainline Records/Thirdwave Collective and Meta for Crunch Pod Media – and now releases Carbon, his first album for Tympanik Audio. Unlike Autoclav1.1 however, Hollis’ music on the whole consists of uncompromising hard electronics. Aimed directly at dark dance-floors around the world, he offers his own brand of broken power electronics to the unsuspecting masses. Creating his own brand of relentlessly pounding energetic beats and floor shaking bassy experimentalism, Hollis presents a familiar style in his unique way. Not content with merely replicating or reproducing the sound, he often slows things down and introduces an air of calm before unleashing another torrent of crazed bassy rhythms. Occasionally, Hollis chooses to mix the two forms – “Reactionary,” “Ghost in the Machine” or “The Answer” for example – and slow things down to emphasise the darker atmospheric side of the music whilst maintaining the rhythmic elements to provide slightly unnerving interludes to his harder electronic outbursts. It is with tracks such as album opener “Churl,” “Peeling the Layers,” “Surgery of the Soul” or “Naked Bloody and Hungry” however that Hollis really lets go and unleashes a frenzied and slightly euphoric onslaught of pulsating beats. Add to this a clinical sharp and equally uncompromising remix of closing album track “Police State” by Pneumatic Detach and Carbon is another great album of hard electronics from the increasingly noteworthy, and still relatively new, Tympanik Audio label.
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Lucidstatic :: Gravedigger (CD)
From the icy landscape of Alaska comes an anonymous artist known only as Lucidstatic. With a long and impressive list of remix and collaborative credits including Unter Null, Assemblage 23, Meat Beat Manifesto, NIN, Caustic, Ani Difranco, Otto Von Shirach and Autoclav1.1, Gravedigger is his first full label release since starting the project back in 2005 and features new and compilation tracks from various sources. Like Endif, Lucidstatic is uncompromising but unlike the pounding beats of his labelmate, Lucidstatic instead produces a sharp, unapologetically synthetic take on powernoise, turning the BPM level up several notches in the process. As Endif does Lucidstatic also includes forays into other musical genres that are incorporated into his music but perhaps not immediately obvious. Amidst the powerful torrents of breaks are experiments in industrial music and dark ambience probably best illustrated by the tracks “Headhunter (Narcotix Edit)” and “Knuckledust.” Reminiscent of Aphex Twin’s more manic experimental outings, Gravedigger is a bewildering array of breakcore, powernoise, industrial and experimental elements that is as original as it is challenging. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste but certainly an album with hidden depths and complexities.
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Integral :: Rise (CD)
Rise by the German duo of David Rotter and Rafael Milatz in the guise of Integral is perhaps the most unexpected release of the four with its gentle experimental electronic whirs, blips and soft undulating tones paired with precise beat patterns. Totalling just under an hour in duration, Rise consists of 11 distinctly electronic but nonetheless emotive tracks of cinematic electronics infused with a rhythmic sense of urgency. This in itself offers some interesting counterpoints; the album as a whole has a distinctive soundtrack quality to it that switches between upbeat tracks of anxious energy (“Distal,” “Rise” or “Back Here Alone”) and slower, more atmospheric tracks of dark but subtle melancholy (“Doors” or “Moonwalk”). Taken as a complete work, Rise could represent the soundtrack to a series of scenes in a sci-fi movie and exhibits an air of haunting trepidation enhanced by gentle fluid tones that sometimes possess an almost choral quality. Although there might not be anything particularly new or innovative to be found on Rise it is a well constructed and realised album of quality electronic music.
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All releases above are out now on Tympanik Audio.
