Articles
2010 Top 10s and 20s
Will Long (Celer)

Albums
Bilxaboy
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
Celer & Yui Onodera
Cepia
Dead Leaf Echo
Ferraris & Uggeri
Ernesto Ferreyra
Flying Horseman
The Foreign Exchange
Les Fragments de la Nuit
Ghost and Tape
Andrew Hargreaves
Head Of Wantastiquet
i8u
Anders Ilar
Quintana Jacobsma
Kaiserdisco
Leafcutter John
Clem Leek
The Lickets
The Machine
Magda
My Fun
Ostendorf, Zoubek, Lauzier
Part Timer
Phillips + Hara
RV Paintings
Set In Sand
Shackleton
Shigeto
Matt Shoemaker
Sun City Girls
Supersilent
Swartz
Ben Swire
Collin Thomas
Tomo
Upward Arrows

Compilations / Mixes
Exp. Dance Breaks 36
Fünf
Lee Jones
The Moon Comes Closer
Note of Seconds
Tensnake

EPs
8Bitch
Celer
Jasper TX
Jozif
Lerosa
Machinefabriek
Patscan
Pleq
Simon Scott
SHEMALE
Thorsten Soltau / Weiss
Jace Syntax & BlackJack
Weiss

Thorsten Soltau / Weiss: Rezykla
Electroton

Weiss: 22.38
Electroton

Type adorning the back cover of Electroton's latest three-inch disc package reads “Thorsten Soltau deconstructs Weiss; Weiss deconstructs Thorsten Soltau” and, in this case, the statement accurately captures the material captured on the twenty-minute disc. Based on single sounds taken from Weiss's Rephlex album, Thorsten Soltau and Martin Weiss face off across four tracks with Soltau creating two minimal sound sculptures that mutate the rhythmic motion in Weiss's music into fragmented digital elements, and Weiss in turn remixing Soltau's remakes so that they revisit the style of Rephlex. Soltau's “Rezykla3” unfolds as a meandering flow of insectoid noises and chatter, with the material punctuated by occasional percussive accents and undergirded by a whispering drone. His “Rezykla7” burrows even deeper into the soil as it sends up signals of microscopic activity and magnified croaks. More engaging are Weiss's re-treatments of Soltau's tracks. In Weiss's “01.Rezykla,” clicks and scratches establish an animated rhythm that grows close in spirit to the monotone syncopations of Carsten Nicolai's alva noto style. Flute-style accents add melodic character to the tune's forcefully funky groove and noise smears flesh out the arrangement with additional detail. Weiss's “02.Rezykla” likewise gets its groove on, this time by wedding a scratchy funk pulse to distorted noise treatments, including what sounds like a car skidding off of the road. Upholding Electron's penchant for ultra-precise engineering, each of the EP's tracks is exactly five minutes in length. The contrasts between the artists' respective tracks couldn't be greater, and it's this aspect of the recording that catches one's ear more than any other.

The five tracks on Weiss's 22.38 (the title simply reflecting the EP's duration) largely perpetuate the style of his material on Rezykla. That's not a bad thing in this case as 22.38's cuts consistently hold one's attention in the way they fuse scalpel-sharp textural treatments and future-funk rhythm structures. The Nürnberg, Germany-based producer at times mangles his beehive swarm so liberally it feels on the verge of being torn apart, and clicks and whirrs grind, splinter, shatter, and squeal throughout the EP, though never haphazardly; instead their imploded actions cohere into arrangements of an unusual kind, while at the same time the rhythm elements lock everything firmly into place down below. Subtle contrasts between the five tracks are evident, but the EP comes across as more of a unified statement, with the cuts registering as variations on a shared theme. The skipping CD rhythms in the fifth track obviously call Oval to mind, but 22.38 should have strong appeal for fans of alva noto too.

December 2010