Label: Novamute
Audio CD (18 May, 1998)
- Contain
- Consume
- Passage (in)
- Cor ten
- Convulse
- Ekko
- Converge
- Locomotion
- Consume (2)
- Passage (out)
This is Richie Hawtin's third album under the name Plastikman.
This album's been described as 'minimal techno' but I think that label would almost be misleading if not applied alongside a further description. There's no overt 4/4 beat on some of the tracks, and when there is, it's not simply the insistent, carefully sculpted rhythm of your usual minimalist techno which shifts in and out of phase, seemingly driven by some German atomic clock. That's present here, but there's also significantly more...
This album lends itself far more to the dark, arctic ambient, with the beats being formed of either deep, deep bass throbs, often accompanied by some hi-hat-type sound like some deep space van de Graaff generator.
When I first heard this album, I was a little disappointed. I am no longer. I was wanting a Jeff Mills style hard, repetitive techno with all the minimalist crafting you would find with such music. But this isn't really what's being dished up - what is being presented is a dark and well thought out album. All the sounds have been carefully sculpted and manipulated so they are just right. Precision and quality is what is being delivered here, but all rather subtlety. It is not an overly fast album, around 100/120 bpm at it's top speed, but it progresses gradually and morphs in sound to fully explore dark landscapes and vistas.
The sense of emotion, space and abstract ideas rendered audible are exactly what I want from good ambient music and techno, and this album has it by the bucket full. This is not music to dance to, but rather to listen to in the dark, especially via headphones.