Tommi Bass & B.B.S.C.: Textures from Berlin
Rednetic Recordings

Only months after the release of his Gamma full-length, Tommi Bass returns (in collaboration with B.B.S.C. of Berlin) with three deep tech-house workouts in the appropriately-titled 3-inch CD Textures From Berlin, so named because the titular textures are actually recordings made around Berlin that were then incorporated into the tracks. As a result, a heavy blanket of industrial soot cloaks the thumping techno gallop and cycling bass pulse powering their way through “Bronze 1.” In the less piledriving “Bronze 2,” immense waves of distorted noise drench a midtempo jaunt, while “Bronze 3,” the strongest of the CD's three cuts, finds Bass draping huge swathes of granular crackle and windy howl over an elastic and sweetly jacking pulse. The release's concept works nicely to Bass's advantage by adding an expansive textural dimension to rhythm-based tracks that, in his hands, are typically skeletal by nature.

January 2010