Copycat Department & Silent Protocol
Единицы
STADTKULT
There’s certainly a lot to chew on in the three track Единицы collaborative EP from Copycat Department and Silent Protocol. Where the former act focuses largely on hypnotic, abstract techno, the latter makes coldwave touched electro, swathed in icy textures. And while you certainly get some of each here, the music they make together is much rougher and punky than you might imagine. “Отрава” has a tumbling, ramshackled drum loop as it’s engine, the rubbery bassline drowned by blown-out shouts and spiky distortion that gets more intense and overwhelming with each repetition. “Единицы” on the other hand goes all in on a 16th note EBM bassline, still blown out and distorted but with an atonal synthline and a twinkling lead that give it a suprisingly melodic throughline. “Время” dials back the distortion somewhat, instead using waves of echoing delay and quavering pads to rough up its otherwise clean arrangement of synth bass and snappy drums. It’s all very rough and DIY, but one gets the impression that that’s the point of the exercise, using those brute force techniques to mash their disparate styles together with impact. And damn if it doesn’t succeed.
Ascending Divers
My Garden
Cyclic Law
French composer Hugo Champion’s Ascending Divers project is a far cry from the hardcore acts he’s had tenures in, yet no less committed to an uncompromising aesthetic than those. While new record My Garden is certainly rooted in long-standing ambient traditions, its compositional minimalism is actually quite distinct from that of early Ascending Divers releases which more closely abutted the worlds of drone and dark ambient. Indeed, timbral colour and resonant harmonies roll back and forth with one another throughout the record, with the image of Debussy chamber suites as heard from the bottom of the ocean, their rich strings blurring their rhythm and tempo into oblivion but retaining their warmth on representative pieces like “Life Review” and “Agapè”, and with individual voices or piano flourishes finding brief, scattered moments of clarity. Even when that sense of weight and presence is given up, as on the almost science fiction soundtrack astral drift of “Rowing From The Other Side”, warmth and resonance remain defining features. A welcome reminder that experimentalism doesn’t necessitate the abandonment of beauty, My Garden makes for a lush and welcoming nocturne.
