Nonwrestler Blog

Weekly mp3 #21: Unit 21 - September, 10th

Figure this is timely given the track title. The ancient techno netlabel Thinner released Unit 21's September-October EP in 2006. Thanks heaps to some dick for bringing it to my attention.

My one word sum up of 'September, 10th' would be "pulsing". It's something like what I'd always expected to hear happening after tracks by people like Porter Ricks and Gas back in the mid-90s. A sort of rainy-day techno? The bassline is just a mechanical buzz and the spaces between the kick drums are filled up with swelling clouds of loosely harmonic stuff. The dub-techno standard of scattered record crackle shifts between roles of providing texture and rhythm. Short, relatively untouched flute passages roam about on top of the beats. Something in the back of my mind says "Blade Runner soundtrack". It's a great atmos, a single-beat pulse that throbs away with no particular feeling of bars or phrases. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1...

In some ways it seems strangely late for this to show up in 2006, given the tricks at play all seem pretty played out, but it's great. The atmosphere and textures remind me a lot of Burial, but obviously kicking off from the (more well-trodden) Teutonic techno starting point.

Unit 21 is a Russian guy called Stanislav Vdovin. Try and say his surname 10 times fast. He's hot enough to have a Virb page.

Labels: music, weekly mp3

Posted at 13:10