The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Facebook event
Abstract Mutation
IRD
Regressor
New Zealand (now Melbourne-based) producer James Grant aka Spelunks/@soakingwet combines acid, bass and techno on his debut Abstract Mutation outing on 1080p. It’s here on pro-dubbed Chrome Cassette Tape, direct from the Vinyl Only Tapes head honcho’s private Kazaa network; the perfect medium for the scuffed kineticity and Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café-worship of this bouncy, hybridized release to really jump out.
Blurring an incessantly groovy sense of looseness alongside taut, metronomic hi-hats and bass plods, Fake Keygen becomes an amorphous zone of hypnotic mundanity. Themes of surveillance, technology and human interfacing creep out of these ad hoc loop pedal/digital synth creations and cheekily reappropriated dance modes.
Tracks like “Oops Magazine” are built partly out of goofball dance signifiers (feigned hi-NRG keyboard stabs in this case) and partly with dark, gaseous spaces. Elsewhere, opener “Expert Loner” even layers faked steel drum wobbles over a steady 100bpm take on a classic house beat.
There’s low-key acid thrown all over reprocessings of mid-90s bass music and techno with vibes of restlessness and at times a tinge of hypnogogia to a definitely late night realm of .nfos and PC gamer patches. File under the Utilities section alongside ancient Soulseeked Rephlex 128kpbs MP3 .zips or maybe even Transllusion’s Cerebral Gate LP.