If there's one electronic sub-genre that is not worth approaching blind it's “tech-house”. Since the late Nineties, it has tended to be the most functional and generic of club soundtracks, a steady, decadent plod, all clean lines and predictable shifts: nothing to frighten the horses or interrupt the steady progress of weekend hedonism. In short, boring. However, there are practitioners who have raised its slowly evolving repetitions to an art form that has life outside the club: the Kompakt label, Chilean maverick Ricardo Villalobos, and Brightonian in Berlin Matt “Radio Slave” Edwards.
This collection of Edwards's reworkings of other underground acts' tunes, while daunting in scale at almost four hours in length, demonstrates his MO perfectly. The tracks are typically around 10 minutes long, and almost without exception have a ticking four-square drum pattern that runs throughout while other elements shift around it. But those shifts are the crux point: everything here is about how very subtle additions and reductions, or small surprise interjections can have powerful effects at a deep level.
If you listen to any given few bars, there's nothing that sounds particularly radical, but over time – especially on headphones – the way that the repetitions work hypnotically then take you along with them to unexpected places is consistently brilliant and disquieting. This is not about euphoria and escapism – lyrics, when they occur, are as likely to be about the harshness of the world or psychic pain as about the pleasures of nightlife – but nor is it about “darkness” for its own sake. Rather, each piece has its own complex, abstract emotional narrative that unpacks odd and unspoken corners of the human psyche. It's not music that flaunts itself, or demands to be loved, and it requires commitment and good audio equipment to work. But let yourself into its geometries and the rewards are many.
Listen to Radio Slave's remix of "Moan" by Trentemøller
