Sundaze, (10)

Hello Sundazers, in a way two sides of the ambient-techno coin here to day. The maybe somewhat naive IDM by a young German from a bavarian provincial town, as opposed to the clinical urbanite minimalism let loose on what was once techno. Maybe that british reserveness is genetic as Hawtin left that english provincial town (Banbury) age 7 for Ontario and spent much time in Detroit. Both work on alienation whilst Plastikman further deconstructs to find his core, Videonoise reconstructs seemingly random noise into a new vision.

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Plastikman - Consumed ( 98 ^ 73:31 357mb)

Probably the best known of Richie Hawtin's production aliases, the Plastikman project helped push the minimal aesthetic of techno. While even his early recordings were quite minimalistic, he streamlined the sound increasingly over the course of his recording career; from the early '90s to the end of the decade, Hawtin's material moved from the verge of the techno mainstream into a yawning abyss of dubbed-out echo-chamber isolationism, often jettisoning any semblance of a bass line or steady beat. Hawtin released material on his own +8 Records under several aliases -- some in tandem with co-founder John Acquaviva -- and made the label one of the best styled in Detroit techno of the 1990s.

The Plastikman project debuted in 1993 with two releases for +8: the seminal "Spastik" single and an album, Sheet One. Hawtin's first wide release, however, came with the alter-ego F.U.S.E. (short for Further Underground Subsonic Experiments). A more varied and melodic project than Plastikman (but not by much), F.U.S.E. released the album Dimension Intrusion for the British Warp Records in late 1993. NovaMute signed an agreement with +8 and another Hawtin-founded label, Probe; Sheet One was reissued in 1994, followed by the second Plastikman LP, Musik. Much more restrained than Sheet One, the album fit in well with the growing ambient-techno movement.

Refused entrance into the USA for more than a year, he lost his inspirational grounding with the Detroit scene and found it difficult to continue recording for his third Plastikman album, Klinik. While he waited for re-entry, Hawtin spent time setting up the sub-label Definitive, and continued to DJ around the world. Though he recorded scattered singles for +8 and related imprints, his only full-length release that year was an excellent entry in the Mixmag Live! series, taken from a DJ set recorded at the Building in Windsor. By the time he was able to return to America, he had changed his musical direction and eventually abandoned the Klinik album.

Hawtin returned in 1996 his release schedule; during each month of the year, he issued a completely unadorned single recorded as Concept 1. Desperately minimal works, even compared to his earlier material, the singles showed Hawtin's reaction to the new-school of barely there techno coming from German labels -- all of them originally influenced in no small way by Plastikman recordings. Finally, in early 1998, he released his third Plastikman LP, Consumed, which proved to be just as brutally shadowed as the Concept 1 material. The continued experimentalist direction showed Hawtin coming full circle, back to his position on the leading edge of intelligent techno. Nearly every sound on Consumed registers in the lowest bass frequencies, except for the barely audible synths hovering, shadow-like, far behind the wall-shaking basslines. The album retains the ability to submerge listeners with its continuity, motifs, and overall tone, but never claims to be dance music. One track slowly merges with the next while the emotional tone instilled by Hawtin never wavers from consuming, contemplative alienation.

Many of the unreleased Klinik recordings surfaced in late 1998 on the compilation Artifakts .Five yearslater Plastikman released "Closer" where Hawtin takes his mastery of minimalism and use of space a couple steps further, rarely putting dance rhythms to use. Paranoia and claustrophobia persistently fester throughout. In a way it's as solitary and sobering as his DJ sets are communal and hedonistic.



01 - Contain (8:29)
02 - Consume (11:18)
03 - Passage (In) (0:54)
04 - Cor Ten (6:50)
05 - Convulse (Sic) (1:22)
06 - Ekko (3:55)
07 - Converge (4:24)
08 - Locomotion (8:49)
09 - In Side (12:37)
10 - Consumed (11:43)
11 - Passage (Out) (3:10)

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Videonoise - Fragmentary (02 ^ 252mb)

Christian Sörgel alias Videonoise is from Landsberg. After his debut from last year, he conjres up a new work full of beauty and strained elements. Many fragments build a whole. Songs starting with strange loops or samples, but then the tracks find each other, become something new, are slowly fading in the end. This album is very careful with sound and music: maybe it´s like you meet the songs, you watch each other fot a little while, then they go away. Electronic sounds are the basics, but there are also guitars and samples, and smooth melancholy.



01 - And Being Inside Doesn't Mean You're In (3:50)
02 - Dare (2:57)
03 - Trashhould (3:03)
04 - Die Echolotdaten (3:06)
05 - Psychotic Download (4:24)
06 - _________ (4:22)
07 - Fragmentary (7:11)
08 - Pelao (3:06)
09 - Nulldurchgang (3:46)
10 - Monosong (4:09)
11 - Die Altstadt (5:33)

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