Isolée ‎– Rest

This album deserves a comment-scratch that, this album deserves a purchase. On sight. Like the description says it's House, Techno, Minimal. Its also electronica/IDM, dubby, glitchy and even dancefloor-y. All about five years before hipsters decided this was the kind of musical aesthetic to move to Berlin and look cool to. Except this is far better than all that minimal hype, and even surpasses Isolee's much-loved 'We Are Monster' LP.
One of those albums you pick up and think 'never heard anything like this before'. Highlights are Gallus and Der Geruch..., the last an astonishing exercise in bass and atmosphere

Just as a starter: ISOLÉE's first album, 'Rest', is the long-awaited revolution of house, techno, electro, well basically every type of electronic music. 'Rest' is one of the most important, best and succinct albums currently available, and above all, when you hear 'Rest' you immediately want to know what it is, in fact, feel an urge to have to know what it is. etermining what that is, a rest.
The rest of electronic music that remains if you rest, wait, put things into a state of suspense in indecisiveness, in which one must re-decide, re-determine. For those who still don't know how to think, electronic music, house and techno mean having a bass drum as the centre so to speak, as the unquestionable piece of hardware that gets the dancefloor moving. This is what ISOLÉE, aka RAJKO MÜLLER, already racked his brains with on 'Logiciel'. Following some extremely successful 12's, 'Beau Mot Plage' - one of last year's very few club hits that were as disorientating as they were connecting - various remixes and a few secret singles the bass drum is still the focal issue. The bass drum, says the first track on his first album, is a part, an element, a word used in software languages, one of the many languages mathematical ensembles we are in the midst of tend to speak in. Distinctly reminiscent of yesterday's minimalism when analogue wasn't an opposite nor by any means a swearword yet, but a kind of battle cry in which the bass drum and samples began to circulate. An issue which also redefined 'Logiciel' to make it a basis of contemporary sound. Also distinctly reminiscent of DANIEL BELL and many others, ISOLÉE dispenses the bass drum in its quasi-classical waveform of one single motion. 'Rest' is what you've split up, a term subject to linguistic complexities, one which only then offers space to project things, to create music in such a way as to make tracks out of it. A delight to listen to and above all 'nice' is Isolée's first album. Classically nice, melodious, harmonious, sound-loving, varied, but of an unnerving self-assuredness of unsureness, making ISOLÉE's music sound strange, yet nice at the same time, like a media review expressed in sounds. Like a basis to transport contents, like a vision of horror or fulfilment, because for ISOLÉE mediums are always many different entities communicating with each other, corresponding formats, languages, melodies, rhythms, things within a massive machinery made by the most different types of machines that can never be amalgamated into one. Mediums, these are structures that must first be redefined to make any sense of them. They change, and precisely this is what music far too seldom preoccupies itself with, the reason why music like 'Rest' sounds so strange, but yet so right, so unquestionable. 'Demon' defines the space between a mask, between mankind and danger, between machine and idea, one that slips under its own guard, one that runs away with itself, from its own harmonies, instigates new ones, sets new subprograms into motion, turns a track into a conglomerate of communication systems which constantly interact with one another, a track that redefines its own connections. A draw, a match that has no winner nor loser. 'Rest' talks to us in various voices not in references to sounds, to stories, but as a reference in itself, as a system of references that is constantly changing. Sometimes also directly, or so it seems, as a kind of invitation, like on 'I Owe You'. But in its preliminary definition, 'Rest' is a remnant, a plateau, pause, relaxation, no thank you we're fine, but we're a residual. Only from this perspective is it comprehensible, and only so because we listen and understand what we hear. A position that becomes blurred in front of our eyes, like a form of concentration in that you find yourself spinning, always accessible, but constantly changing domains. 'Rest' is a stage which is being worked on during the match, on which the match is no longer a place where players meet and work with rules, but a match where players revolve the same way as the rules do. And 'Rest' is not de-personalised music, but music in which people can circulate all the more, and see who's where and what, shortly before others can become something else and you yourself, too. Not an experiment which you have to give in to, but a timeline on which you function, without being obliged to do so this way or the other. ISOLÉE is familiar with the history of electronic music, he takes it apart, not to redefine parts of it, but to allow time that is music to reappear again, not to sort times in a kind of hyper-filing-system, as if knowing how everything should be, but to set files into motion, a motion that not only makes music sound new, but one in which one can summarise everything, because it follows our train of thought in creating its openings, outlooks, situations and eccentricities, luckily with us, with the machines, with software, mediums, mutations, stories, ideas, people, worlds, adventures, etc. They're all partners in crime, 'Tout se complique', and everything's in this place called 'Rest' to which complexity couldn't possibly coin an opposite, the place where everything's happening, at the right time.