Author: Matt Oliver

Album Review: Gary Beck / ‘Bring a Friend’ (Soma)

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★★★★☆

Scotsman Gary Beck is entrusted with serving Soma’s 100th LP release, and his plus one invitation runs around trying to make sure everyone’s techno tastes are taken care off. Attaining mastery to everything he sculpts, Beck doesn’t forget to enjoy himself while looking out for his guests with absorbingly powerful epics on the brink of combustion, picturing the scene of partiers for as far as the eye can see bowing down before him.

You’re not left long to wonder if Beck will ever unleash his wrath. Though commanding early on, there’s only so long you can spectate with bated breath. “D51” is the first party-pooper, checking the pace to force the optimism to eat acid-spiked lead, backed up by “Skiver”, where the slower the beats, the harder they come. “Before the Crash” is a funky brute ploughing through, and Beck settles into a tough dictatorship for whom minimalism or the skeletal are ugly concepts (okay, there is “Hopkin”, but that’s where ugly is a compliment).

The beats are fleshy in their single-mindedness, and the often anxious atmosphere swirls and swoops very really before your ears, including some speculative downtime on “Little Moon” remaining ill at ease. For want of a less dated phrase, Beck is forever full on, blowing out Soma’s birthday candles to leave brains and bodies buckled.
File under: Ben Sims, Mark Broom, Speedy J

Album Review: Albert Swarm / ‘Wake’ (Ceremony)

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★★★★☆

A crash course in ambient electronica – notwithstanding that the crashes are floats down to earth – and a 28-minute running time means Albert Swarm, a.k.a. the Finn Pietu Arvola, is promising harmony in a hurry.

Starting with a strong dose of smelling salts with “Something Glows,” “A Dream That Glistened” sets the itinerary adrift, posing one of those logistical problems of being glossy chillout, and where the widescreen nature within means it should probably be turned up louder than is conventional. Worry always seems to be part of Swarm’s make-up though – never a bellowing anguish, but an in-your-seat squirm that he won’t openly let on about, such as when he borrows from dubstep and lets it bleed into “Fadima” and “He Took a Deep Breath”. These slender pangs add an edge when taking the edge off is meant to be the oeuvre’s entire point, caught between dreaming blithely and having its fantasies rudely trespassed and illusions splintered.

Drawn by long swelling synth lines, a low-key sense of authority and nobility to the deep house mind-expander “Things Fold into Themselves” reaches a fine high. Is he breaking new ground? Is saying he plays to and has honed ambient electronica’s strengths a backhanded compliment? Albert Swarm is as modest as his name without doing the whole aren’t-I-enigmatic thing, going about his business, touching a chord and the occasional heart, before exiting with just as little fanfare.
File under: Petar Dundov, Alex Under, Blue Fields

Album Review: Spitzer / ‘The Call’ (InFiné)

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★★★★☆

Theatrical prog-rock-style elements against miserly tech house from Spitzer’s Damien and Matthieu Brègère mean The Call is not an album you should be making snap judgements on. While setting up as a darkened dance floor trundle, the brothers adding blood and tears to the onset of sweat, the big guitar twangs that clap and illuminate like thunder and lightning, and tremulous build-ups creating many a cliff-hanger, might have you worrying about dance-rock shortfalls.

Except, well it’s not really dance-rock by definition, more a knowledge of when to strike the electronica with French flair and the theatre of guitar. The tension-ridden, tribal electro of “Madigan” sounds as if it should come with accompanying choreography to immediately realign perceptions: it certainly doesn’t let on that a lurching synth-pop stereotype in black called “Clunker” should follow either. Its dance floor acts hint at disquiet, but the nip and tuck, who-can-draw ubiquity doesn’t allow it to burgeon, with the explosion that you’re hoping/waiting for again unexpected – this time a Björk-like outpouring from Kid A, on the overcast strain “Too Hard to Breathe.”

A little bemusing as it stop-starts between forlorn episodes and something to dance the angst away to, there’s enough to make you start over and take stock, and props to Spitzer for not playing to type or simply accepting the dos and don’ts of album-making.
File under: Justice, Agoria, Mumbai Science

Album Review: Terrence Dixon / ‘From the Far Future Pt.2’ (Tresor)

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★★★☆☆

Welcome to the newest transmission from the 25th century. With Part One light years ahead of its millennium release, Terrence Dixon tentatively re-enters the system, sounding awestruck with a fluidity where feet barely touch the ground. The sublime, remote hum encasing “Dark City of Hope” leads the charismatic networks of fractals unlimited and sonic equations, careful not to splash too much in the brooks of bass while technical precision rules.

FTFF2 flouts any tag of withdrawn, milder-than-most techno. Dixon can get ruffled – see the chopper bladed “My Journey Here”, again upholding that near yet far continuum of sound. “Path to Mystery” is curter, self-explanatory storytelling, “The Switch” loops into a coming and going muddle, and the Motor City operative scatters seeds of doubt with trickles of synth mischief and pendulous filters. More tellingly or less obviously, it does sound as if a fierce techno album is being held back, the gliding pace suggesting a truant in a former life, a rebooted bad boy wanting to go straight who can’t quite kick the habit.

“The Auto Factory,” another self-describing automator, is the album’s most metallic assault, rotating as an industrial-sized fan. “Lead by Example” adds steel and industry to the calmly constructed, while “Navigate” is the rogue’s last stand. Techno that doesn’t side with either being passive or aggressive – and therein lies the enigma.
File under: Population One, Steve Rachmad, Juan Atkins