I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of ambient head, as someone who, once a week, sits quietly in a dark room meditating to whatever ethereal arrangement of atmospheric sounds he’s managed to stumble upon that week. In reality, my lifelong love for drum and bass has always penetrated such moments, meaning that instead of listening to what you could term ‘pure’ ambient, I’ve always swayed towards the sort of music that combines thoughtful, oscillating ambient tones with the rough template of 170bpm. Sam KDC, ASC, and the like are fine examples, but I’ve always been especially fond of the slices of loveliness served up by Synkro and Indigo. Their first release on Exit Records, ‘Guidance/Reflection’, was truly pathbreaking, and their individual offerings on the same label, ‘Progression’ by Synkro and the bafflingly named ‘Ayahuasca’ by Indigo were excellent. It was through these tunes that I began to explore, and quickly became a fan of, these two young producers.
Of course, they’ve not confined themselves to the 170bpm template. For example, in the past 18 months or so, they’ve both put out brilliant solo EPs on R&S sub-label Apollo, EPs that demonstrated they are also capable of producing tunes that render the boundaries between what constitutes garage, downtempo, and ambient music as completely superficial. Then something surprising happened. Around the same time as their Apollo EPs, a couple of anonymous tunes by an anonymous ‘music collective’ called Akkord surfaced and were self-released on limited vinyl pressings. Defined by eclectic concoctions of techno and garage, and put together in such a meticulous way that would have a civil engineer nodding in agreement, these self-released 12”s caused quite a stir, not just because of their quality but because of their stony anonymity. Some said it was another Paul Woolford alias, others said it might by Blawan plus a couple of his mates, but I don’t think many people threw the names of Synkro and Indigo into the mix. It seems we were wrong. Alas, we were, and Akkord were unmasked. They’ve recently released their debut LP on the esteemed Houndstooth label, and, if I’m honest, it’s utterly brilliant.
For me, this is a techno album, but one which pays no attention to what accepted definitions of techno are. You feel like it’s a techno album made by people who’ve never listened to techno before (although they obviously have). Or, if they have, they’ve only listened to techno to come up with ways of turning it inside-out. Tunes like ‘Hex Ad’ and ‘Folded Edge’ are the sort of tunes that when you hear them on a dance floor, you briefly stop, trying to work out exactly what is going on with the genius percussion, but not realising that all the while your face is melting like a snowman in the baking sun. ‘Navigate’ is a bit more simple, a bit more stripped, but it conjures the same affect; rattling, skittling breaks skip over a 4x4 tempo while a droning, nightmarish bassline contorts itself in the background. And as for ‘3dOS’: I do not possess the adequate technical vocabulary to describe what they do with that bassline, although I suspect it might involve a Tardis borrowed from the Time Lords. It must be listened to to be believed. I even ran it through my mixer, turning the bass up and the highs and mids down to zero, just to experiment, and it sounded immense on a planetary scale.
Then you get the slightly more downtempo bits, such as ‘Torr Vale’ and album closer ‘Undertow’, that simmer with angry energy while reducing the percussion to an absolute minimum. ‘Rocendal’ sounds like something that might get released by Mala on DMZ; while ‘Conveyor’ scared the shit out of me when it dropped, sounding like what might happen if a synthesiser was hit by a lightning bolt. A special mention should also go to ‘Smoke Circle’. When listening to its ritualistic pounding drums, I thought to myself this is something that should be recited over and, duly enough, a harsh, guttural chant appeared moments later.
All in all, every tune on here shocked and astounded me in equal measure. On listening through a couple of times however, once you’ve un-dropped your jaw and paid a bit more attention, you notice with curiosity that there’s actually not a great deal of different sounds across this album. This could have been a recipe for boredom and thus disaster. But what prevents this is, you come to realise, a feeling of constant, ceaseless progression; even though the sounds are familiar, you’re always aware of this slightly unsettling sensation of growing suspense, as if you’re listening to something that is in an endless process of edging towards some sort of cataclysm. In other words, it grows and grows and grows without ever revealing what the final stage of this growth might be. It feels like the entire album is in a constant state of becoming something. That something is, of course, itself. As a consequence, it succeeds in what many artists claim they try to do but what few of them actually manage: to create on album with a ‘feel’, with an overall coherence that permeates through every individual tune without making these individual tunes disinteresting and repetitive. It is one of the most meticulously detailed, technically precise, gobsmackingly original, and terrifyingly arranged albums that I’ve came across in some time. In short, a masterpiece. It won’t be for everyone, admittedly, but if you want to listen to the very cutting edge of what dance music is and what it can do in 2014, then there aren’t many better places to start.
Words: Matthew Scott
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