DSCRD _ Monad XII _ [SAM012]
With this 4 track EP – Dscrd take the opportunity to offer the listener something unique with each track, the overall sound encapsulated within the remit of today’s Techno productions that demands spacious, stark and alienating soundscapes, complimented with pummelling kicks and deep bass.
XII – Stroboscopic Artefacts latest release in its Monad series, is one that will make a fine addition to a series that has already gotten something distinctive out of producers like Xhin, Dadub and Perc.
The opening track, Maskinen, starts the release off in a low gear and it’s coarse, percussive elements feel like they could have been arranged by someone like Gil Evans for a jazz ensemble. As well as this the track maintains that stark, spacious and alienating sensation that has become so prevalent among contemporary Techno productions, reinforced with the steel-on-steel, grating impacts, set against ominous, low frequency bass rumblings.
As its name suggests, Graphene points towards the future with a rather cacophonous collection of broken time signatures and poly-rhythms that really deal the listener a serious jolt; the kind of track that will test the mixing capabilities of the ardent DJ while satisfying the desires of the more progressive dilettante who’s looking for something a little different when it comes to Techno. The near subliminal pops and crackles added to the production only serve to accentuate the sinister, back alley bent to this
track and instil a real sensation in the listener that this track is lurking in the shadows; waiting to initiate some caper best found an espionage thriller.
Opening with what sounds like a 21st century update of the 56k modem dial-up tone, Combinat continues the off kilter vibe that permeates this release while the cold, sub glacial menace of Closure leaves the listener feeling as if their skin is trying to crawl off their muscles, the ornamentation of industrial clangs, the Baltic slice of icy guillotines seasoning this track and adding to the overall
unsettling character of this release.
In Dscrd’s hands, the rather high standards to which the Monad series has aspired are certainly maintained and the releases offers something a little different from what one may usually expect from a Techno EP. While this reviewer can’t imagine the tracks contained here finding their way into a massive, derelict warehouse, punched through a big sound system, it still feels like Monad XII would work perfectly in some dingy, squat little basement session; something murky and certainly underground.
If that sounds like the kind of buzz you could see yourself getting into for a weekend, then Monad XII is probably going to be a release that will compliment such an underground excursion perfectly.
Definitely worth checking out.
Monad XII is released on the 2nd of August.
Stroboscopic Artefacts: http://www.stroboscopicartefacts.com/shop/releases/monad/
Press release:
Stroboscopic Artefacts presents the Monad series. Rarefied and introspective, confrontational and extreme, each featured artist will delve into the Monad concept: The generation of number series is related to objects of geometry as well as cosmogony. From the Monad evolved the Dyad; from it numbers; from numbers, points; then lines, two-dimensional entities, three-dimensional entities, bodies, culminating in the four elements earth, water, fire and air, from which the rest of our world is built up.
The twelfth chapter of the Monad series comes from Dscrd, a five-strong Parisian collective. From their ten hands four tracks have emerged that explore music’s very building blocks, tracks that are the product of complex ideas having been slowly simmered down to form dub-substrates and ambient-essences. Dscrd’s points of reference are certainly concrete, but somehow it’s impossible to place them, they remain elusively abstract. Amid swung bass lines voices mumble to themselves, dull metallic clangs are heard from far-off and noise fuzzes scruffily at the edges. This is music that revels in the barely perceptible, the half-understood. It’s a bold EP that dares to tug at the very limits of our perception.
Words: Clare Molloy
