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The Warped side of 
Gems of psychotic sounds come stateside
As the growing tentacles of electronic music clutch every different genre of music, from drum and bass to progressive house, fans have found that as time moves on, much of the music stays the same.
While such trance idols such as Paul Oakenfold and Sasha and Digweed gain public
acclaim, longtime followers of this music find these beats to be a basic rehash of the rave culture of the early 90s. Sure, sometimes you need to dance and lose your mind. But there is more.
Luckily, as we see the masses waiting patiently for the newest Nine Inch Nails album to be revealed, those of us who are looking for something a bit more difficult can smile. With millions pouring in from the sale of eachMarilyn Manson t-shirt, we can rejoice. As Reznor's nothing record amasses a profit, Mr. NIN's minions are allowed to continue with their much less publicized and much more enthralling projects. In the last few years, nothing has agreed to stateside distribution of three of the most confusing and exciting acts on one of the world's oddest imprints, Warp records. Finally, someone to push our envelope.
But Autechre, Squarepusher and Plaid are not simply pushing it, they are tearing, licking, coloring and folding the envelope to make something which is often at once both beautiful and frightening.
While nothing must know these records will never be flagship projects yielding platinum sales, they have invested in something more: mind expansion. Within the stacks and stacks of booty-shaking bass lines and hands-in-the-air dance floor anthems, there is now a place (domestically) to also feed your head. With nothing's three new releases, ep7 by Autechre, Rest Proof Clockwork by Plaid, and Maximum
Priest E.P by Squarepusher, it has become increasingly easy to obtain these aural Rorschach tests in
your neighborhood record store. But be warned. These little gems of psychosis bring a truly mental experience and each act has its own unique malady.
Autechre is the autistic savant of the group. Able to both graph songs onto paper and twist emotion from a keyboard, the latest release from this Mancunian duo (Sean Booth and Rob Brown), ep 7, represents the bleeps and the whirs that most Americans fear. Autechre, like their comrade Aphex Twin, seek to remove all conventions from music. Song structure? In their minds perhaps, but not to the normal human ear. Rhythm? Melody? Nice, but never necessary. Easily discernable song listings or colorful photographs for an album cover? Hah. This is armchair techno for math geniuses, not pop for the masses. But what Autechre does provide is the sound of a world encased in machinery, a bubbling landscape with gurgling liquids and whirring creatures. What makes this sound different from other mind bending technoid albums is that Autechre are at peace with this world. On ep7, it is not man against machine. Autechre respects and lovingly records what its machines have to say. If the language of technology is mathematics, they interpret for us what the mechanized world has always wanted to sing.
Squarepusher is the changeling. From organ dirges and hauntingly incomprehensible murmurings on his latest outing to the jazz improvisations on his last LP Music Is Rotted One Note, Tom Jenkinson (AKA Squarepusher) has proven his mettle as a multi-trick pony. He has mastered this shape shifting effect not only on a per record basis, but Squarepusher seems to enjoy luring listeners into a song with simple beats and Casio keyboard melodies, and then ending the journey with growls, syncopated rhythms, and out-of-time basslines. On Maximum Priest E.P., Jenkinson supplies four new tracks and three remixes (one by fellow freakWagonchrist), and provides us once again with a new definition of music and another piece of his twisted mind.
Comparatively, Plaid is the normal, but subversive, one. Unlike the disturbing flavors preferred by their cohorts, Plaid choose to follow the lines of convention, and then add its own unconventional dashes of influence. Tracks such as "Little People" bring spiraling melodies and off-kilter scratches to transform what in other hands might be considered "easy listening" into beautiful beat-filled lullabies. Underneath multiple layers of melodious organ and charming chimes, a drum and bass beat is added to "Gel Lab." Matching patterns seems to be where the name was derived. But Ed Handley and Andy Turner's originality lies more in their music's surprising palatability than in its shock value. After a few listens, Rest Proof Clockwork becomes a calming mood enhancing tool, but its fun lies in thinking about the oddness of its parts. The beats are not pounding, but distorted and diluted. The melodies come from somewhere in the past on nondescript instruments. With their new release, Plaid have produced a fluid work with a tide-like flow that leaves the listener both calm and confused.
by Miguel Banuelos
info@outersound.com
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