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A terrific, fresh techno EP by Robin Stewart. Minimalist and dubwise, but fizzing with physical energy, and loaded with thrills and spills, like fairground ghost trains clanking and rattling through Rome, at a clip.
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‘Regrows dub techno from the seeds,’ says Boomkat, ‘with a set of twisted warehouse melters that apply advanced dub logic to pointillistic technoid rhythms.
‘The off-grid, lolloping kicks are interesting enough on their own, but it’s how Stewart treats them that makes opener Stomach pop, sinking them in swirling, lysergic goop rather than drowning them out with rinsed tape FX. The oscillating, demonic subs that heave just beneath the surface don’t muddy things completely, they crack the sunroof on the top end, letting the industrialized foley clanks and hoarse vocaloid stutters boot us towards an unexpected destination. And although Compact is more trad on the surface — a gated peak-time roller, natch — Stewart’s canny processing makes the kicks tickle more than they thump. Everything builds up to the title track, where Stewart freezes mind-rinsing dissociated echo spirals into their own rhythmic forms that push against the relentless double-time thuds, weaving phantom polyrhythms out of thin air while spectral voices whisper overhead.’
A deep, atmospheric, careering groover from Gerard Hanson, remixed by ERP into thrilling, futuristic electro. Ace.
The Chain Reaction classic.
The sublime 2001 swansong of James Stinson, of Drexciya. ‘By turns luminous and melancholic, low-key and sensuous, wry and soulful’ (Pitchfork).
‘Deep, cosmic, funky electro, full of feeling; a mesmerizing journey into the heart of summer’s fading glow.’
Epic, grooving, extravagantly creative, perfectly attuned blends of complex mbalax drumming, field recordings, thumping kick-drum, and cosmic, bubbling, jamming synths and electronics.
The opening is suitably liminal, haunted by a diachronic sense of times past, present, and to come: ancestral ghosts, scratched playback, scraps of old recordings, voices strangulated or just out of range; puttering drums; futuristic, kosmische keys. Part II picks up the pace; III gives the drummers some, and heightens the atmosphere of enchantment. Jon Hassell’s Fourth World music courses through a kind of Dream Theory In Dakar.
Toco SOS, the second side, is a thumping, throbbing, mesmeric future-classic; perfect for fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n on the Autobahn… in a spacecraft. Expert hand percussion, call-and-response singing, bin-trembling foot-drum, spaceways keys. Sleekly funky as prime Popol Vuh.
Both sides range expansively by way of Berlin, where Lamin resided for a few years: you can hear something of T++’s brilliant, landmark HJ record on the A, and elements of Mark Ernestus’ crucial Ndagga project, on the B.
Half an hour of stunning music; in a beautiful sleeve, with mirror lettering, and an intricate spot-gloss rendition of salt crystals, laid over a photograph of the salt mines at Lac Rose, outside Dakar.