EAU-DC
NR 2
GERMANY EMPIRIC RECORDS EMREC 3 (2013)
It begins as a series of warm, leisurely pulses that ripple across my living room, like Janek Schaefer’s respiratory system beamed live from ‘Basic Channel’ radio. It’s a bare beginning, but evolves by and by, softly excavated by sub-bass scrapes, then accommodating an array of devices cherry-picked from the modern electronic(a) lexicon and stripped to the skeleton. The sound is eclectic but implacable, as if dreamed, depersonalised and filtered through the same slurred, sun-bleached prism that renders the best available dub techno so hypnotising.
EAU-DC is Messrs Thorsten Polomski and Jens Fischer, the latter of whom may or may not trade under the guise of ‘DJ Fox’. Information on the pair is scarcer than this 200-copy record (large posters enclosed in the first 100). It is a streamlined sequel to the artists’ ‘sometimes hasty’ debut, and it displays an approach to track construction that is as laconic as their press: “just mixing up favoured elements, adding more restrained, but sometimes pretty hasty beats and analog sounding fx’s”. And though dropped twice in the same copy, here ‘haste’ is as conspicuous by its audible absence as is unnecessary explanation. Personal satisfaction is the artists’ evident motivating mandate, but with indulgence subordinate to intuition. The results should thus please anyone with an ear for ambiguous, understated atmospheres that don’t necessitate herbal accompaniment.
The seamlessly segued ‘SKLLRDE / PRNCS’ provides a lengthy lead-in, draping layer upon luscious layer of languorous cloud-tone over a ghostly heartbeat. An arrhythmic limp sets the tempo for ‘MCROMRKA’, the first track to make use of more than one vowel in the title. The resulting oxygen expulsion and subsequently dizzying head-rush might explain this ear-catching meter, which is, in due course, ameliorated by a vertiginous, undulating organ line. Side B ups the speed slightly: scattering suggestions of drum’n’bass and even dubstep here and there, though always in the sparest, most tasteful manner I hasten to add. Even the remote, pitch-shifted (but radiant) female vocals in the final track – ‘ESTUTHAT’ – look unlikely to divide listeners the way Burial’s ‘Untrue’ did, instead allowing the record to drift into its longed-for last slumber.
NR 2 is a solid listening experience in its entirety, offering your ears some of the best comfort that music money can by, short of Boards of Canada reissues perhaps. These 8 tracks amount to a hazy road journey that casually deconstructs any number of electronic sub-genres, and if you choose to ignore the label’s ‘33rpm’ notice, you can make a double album of it to no dilution of your enjoyment.