Acronym back on home turf Northern Electronics with five tracks of psychedelic dance floor excursions and ambient pieces.
ambient techno
Deepchord – Ultraviolet Music [SOMACD111]
Given his prolific nature, fresh material from Rod Modell under the Deepchord guise is not news. There is, though, something rather special and extra-ordinary about Ultraviolet Music, an expansive, double-disc full length for Soma, which the Detroit-based producer has described as “hallucinogenic”. Taking dub techno as his blueprint, Modell delivers an impressive collection of hypnotic, out-there moments that also take influence from ambient, Detroit techno, deep house, and the kind of fuzzy, beguiling sonic textures guaranteed to flip your lid. While many of Modell’s albums feature epic, 20-minute plus workouts, here he quickly shuffles between shorter moments whilst retaining a deliciously dubby dancefloor pulse.
Marco Shuttle – Sing Like A Bird (Reprise) [EE009]
Marco Shuttle returns to his Eerie label for his first full release since 2014’s debut album, ‘Visione’, with a new two track single that sees Shuttle return to more dancefloor driven territory. ‘Sing Like a Bird (Reprise)’ is a fresh version of the track originally released last year on Peter Van Hoesen’s Time To Express label, to which Shuttle fans will have become familiar with in recent sets. It maintains the original’s hazy reverbed flavour, but in the form of a more groove-oriented and psychedelic edit that sidelines much of the original’s vocal track in favour of a snake enchanter-like synewave melody, for a less lyrical but equally musical new take. The B-side ‘Back Here’ is an older track that Shuttle has been holding back for a while, waiting for the right moment to reveal this atmospheric, melancholic and melodic track, in which intricately delayed layers of piano keys progressively unfold through a rich percussive background made of 808 rims, deep bass kicks, heavy toms and jazzy hats and rides.
Silent Harbour – Hinterland [DSCLP001]
Once again the dutchman from the north Boris Bunnik (who actually resides in Rotterdam now, but that aside) is showcasing his magic fingers, this time on Shipwrec’s deep techno offshoot Deep Sound Channel. ‘Hinterland’ is a topnotch ice-cold but heartwarming submarine electro/techno album with distant hints of IDM, in other words the perfect soundtrack for the long midwinter nights to come.
Recondite – Placid [ATLP006]
Recondite aka Lorenz Brunner is back, this time partaking in some wild experiments with acid, on behalf of California’s Acid Test imprint. Beginning with the ultra-deep and reductionist “Compel” which is reminiscent of early Plastikman, he then launches into the funky R&B tempo of “Pass Up” and the sombre and emotional tones of “Undulate” which gets the first four to the floor beat going. Life & Death label mates Tale Of Us join Brunner on the stunningly soulful “Sequenze” while “Subdue” presents his darkest side on the album. Later on “Ley” gets a peak time level stomp on, in fine acidic style. While Brunner has most definitely found his stride, leading to current mass appeal, he certainly proves he still has underground credentials on this fine effort.
Oliver Ho & Danny Passarella – Multi [PASS002]
Oliver Ho produces music on the axes of techno and noise. Danny Passarella works with synthesisers, but also designs clothes. Together they’ve made Multi, a conceptual EP on the subject of gender (non-)binaries. Four tracks of thoughtful synth-scapes and reverbed techno. 12” release on Passarella’s self-titled label.
Shinichi Atobe – Ship Scope [DDS014]
Hugely sought-after techno classic – the precedent to ‘Butterfly Effect’, originally released on Berlin’s legendary Chain reaction and out-of-print for 15 years, now newly remastered from vinyl by Matt Colton at Alchemy. A massive personal favourite of Demdike Stare’s, Shinichi Atobe’s ‘Ship Scope’ was Chain Reaction’s penultimate release in 2001 and, with the benefit of hindsight, also one of the legendary label’s most sublime offerings.
Giorgio Gigli – The Right Place Where Not To Be [EDLX045LP]
“The Right Place Where Not to Be” is the title of Giorgio Gigli’s first full-length “sonic movie”, a work emerging from the depth of his soul and which properly filters every musical input he’s developed over the years. The album takes its outset in a scenario where all human and animal life-forms have perished and only plants and minerals have survived. Giorgio performs that concept writing an ultra-detailed soundtrack to an imaginary movie, using rich textures that reveal new acoustics, enhanced by alienating atmospheres that captivate the listener. The album is focused on obsessive rhythmics cut on low frequencies, a persistent motion, and a stable tremor. The world is justifying its life-forms in detail. The sky is darkened by laden clouds and stratified sonics that electrify the sound of space. Blooming sensations that cover a wide spectrum, alternate from a feverish tension to the lightness of faith. Confines are rejected, techno meets ambient, purging our body of consciousness. A sonic bubble from a faraway era, a timeless atmosphere that describes a vision that seems to answer to the most important question: why? The task of creating an album is brilliantly managed in a manner that cinematically depicts a surreal concept without the loss tension. The experience of the music is enhanced by the intricate artwork with an evocative artwork that expresses Giorgio’s concept: The sequence of mountains dominated by clouds on a clear sky and the depths of flowers are tinged with the memory of a wonderful past.
Continue reading “Giorgio Gigli – The Right Place Where Not To Be [EDLX045LP]”
Abdulla Rashim – A Shell of Speed [NE024]
Last year, Abdulla Rashim took time out to develop his alternative Lundin Oil project, delivering two EPs of in-your-face noise and industrial techno textures for Northern Electrics. Here, he switches back to his main creative name for a second Abdulla Rashim set that joins the dots between intense, beatless ambience and modular techno box jams. Despite the general bleakness of his sounds and method, A Shell of Speed is surprisingly picturesque and melodious in parts, with the brilliant “Crossing Qalandiya” delivering the kind of trippy, delay-laden electronic soundscapes that recall the halcyon days of IDM and ambient. Even so, it’s his more surging, rhythmically intense compositions – see “Red Pool” and “Ador Tracers” – that arguably stand out.
ADMX-71 – Coherent Abstractions [LIES067]
Adam X is back with his third album release under his industrial guise, ADMX-71. Adam returns to the L.I.E.S. front with Coherent Abstractions, a brand new album of singular experiments that pull from every corner of electronic music’s landscape into a comprehensive and propulsive full-length. Coherent Abstractions pulsates with fractured rhythms, vacillating melodies and mesmerizing compositions that showcase Adam’s impressive history working in all aspects of the underbelly of electronic music. Noise and industrial elements seep into the album’s 11 songs, churning the cold and abrasive into feverish new territory. Though Coherent Abstractions operates primarily in sounds of solitude, guest vocalist Janina joins Bound and Broken for a rare vocal collaboration on an ADMX-71 track.
Refracted – Through The Spirit Realm [SSV008]
Through The Spirit Realm is Refracted’s first LP to date, and it comes Canada’s excellent Silent Season. “Enter The Jungle” quickly gives a picture of what’s to come thanks to the track’s abstract blend of animal sounds, a myriad of noises which is swallowed up the warm and dubby swings of “The Jungle Is Thick”. The whole LP follows a similar string of thought, one that binds stripped back techno together with deep ambience and slow-moving plates of drone; “The Ritual Begins” is simply hypnotic and we could keep it on for hours on loop. It’s tribalism at its most cutting-edge, and an altogether fantastic debut performance from this growing techno personality.
ASC – Beneath The Surface [SSV009]
Long-serving Brit in San Diego James Clements dons his familiar ASC guise once more, for a typically atmospheric trip into deep, ambient-influenced abstract techno for Canada’s Silent Season imprint. As usual, there’s much to admire, from the sparse percussion, glacial electronics and icy melodies of “Deep Freeze”, to the minimalist, modular-sounding hum of closer “Raging Seas”. Arguably best of all, though, is “Immersion”, which sees Clements expertly combine early ’90s style dreamy ambient chords, textures and melodies – think Pete Namlook or early Irresistible Force – with scraped metal textures and impeccable IDM beats.
Imre Kiss – Midnight Wave [LT013]
Imre Kiss finally lands back on the Lobster Theremin mothership, this time with a reissue of his seminal tape album Midnight Wave. A seminal, bold and instantly nostalgic LP, Midnight Wave showcases Imre’s immense ability to craft vivid landscapes of ethereal sound, infused with layers and years of emotional content. Culled from live-to-tape synth sessions in his once London abode, these tracks are the result of melancholic and restricted surroundings and trappings. What has emerged is a body of crackling, warm ambient and techno with a vast, cinematic scope. A sonic portrait of an alienated moment in London, told using industrial visceral tools and visualised through the cutting figure of a lonely individual boarding the 5am night bus home.
Voices from the Lake – Live at MAXXI [EMEGO209LP]
‘Italian techno masterminds Donato Dozzy and Neel are returning as the duo Voices From The Lake with a release on the mother label Editions Mego: Live @ MAXXI is a marvellous organic live-set of hypnotic ambient techno, proofing the outstanding and elegant craftsmanship of their sonic sculpturing, that they both are famous for. As was to be expected they stay true to their polyphonic topography of liquid scapes: aquatic sceneries are embedded in soaking dense atmospheres, gently gyrating us into trance. Sometimes soft echoes of sirenic voices are heard – the only remnants of human traces in these spaces that have suspended time, where smooth silky textures are being channeled into fractal structures that induce a state of transcendence. The haptic quality of their sound is adding up to a sonic matrix of metaphysic imaginary that is provoked by gentle glides and dynamic beat patterns of almost tribalistic quality. Dunked in a bath of dark fluid, sometimes washed away at the shores of Kosmische – VFTL’s tunes are not scared to seduce us into a condition of haziness, culminating in a cover of Paolo Conte’s ,Max’ which is turned into a dazzling sample of sweet, dreamy melancholia.
Lituus – 19805. -_ 19905, [AVN021]
Chicago based musician Connor Camburn under the alias Lituus, with an entirely beatless collection that well establishes Avian as the home for the kind of searching electronic experimentation that would have been found on the ten-inch focused imprint that Shifted recently announced would merge with its parent label. Shorn of percussive elements yet not without their own rhythmic structures, Camburn’s six compositions are free of immediate electronic genre influences and instead draw primarily on non-musical inspiration in addition to various other contextual reference points, as he sought to express ideas of the unraveling or ”de-composition” of musical or architectural spaces through musical forms imagined as inverted contours and negative spaces.
Chevel – Blurse [SALP003]
Chevel (a.k.a. Dario Tronchin) now makes his LP debut for Stroboscopic Artefacts. Over the course of his young career, Chevel has gained a mastery over several compositional elements: Polaroid-like slow melodic fades, sharp ricocheting beats, and simply making one’s headphones feel like a viable means of physical transportation. Despite Chevel’s keeping the sonic toolkit and overall atmosphere consistent from track to track, there is a rich variety in the emotional affectivity on display here. The net effect is like a dream state that leaves strong impressions even though one can’t pinpoint exactly why they are doing so.
Moodcut – Heart Beat Takeaway [MORK006]
Dust-soaked and fizzing with effervescent residue, these five tracks swerve and dive between subtle synth texturisations and deep-sleeping sullen house. The boundaries between ambient and house often merging in the depths of the warm, throbbing, analogue fuzz.
Eduardo De La Calle – Nanoscopic Scales [HVN031]
The bold Eduardo de La Calle of Analog Solutions infamy drops his second 12″ for Hivern, following up from his take on U’R’s “Transition” for the 2014 HVN release. Here Eduardo gives us some us his finest examples of the lush Techno soundscapes he’s become known for.
Sa Pa – Fuubutsushi [FORUMIV]
There’s something decidedly mysterious and otherworldly about this fourth release on Giegling’s Forum sub-label. As usual, they’re not giving much away, and to make matters worse the artist at the controls – the previously unheard of Sa Pa – is a debutant. Happily, the music – a mix of crackly, fizzing, minimal-influenced experimental techno, ambient and weirder, dub-flecked explorations – speaks for itself. Fuubutsushi is an impressively atmospheric and off-kilter affair, with Sa Pa paying much attention to the tiniest of details (see the intricate sound collage that forms the rhythm track on the bleak “Tagularius”). If this is indeed Sa Pa’s first outing (and there’s a suspicon it’s an alter-ego, given the quality of the production), it’s rather impressive. A poet’s reminder of a specific season.
