Sote – Electric Deaf

Still stunning after nearly 20 years! Buy and watch those bass cones shake!

This is beyond any doubt my favourite purple-cover Warp release. Masterpiece.

Mastering Electric Deaf : Distortion via hard clipping your AD convertor, add 15ms slap delay on one channel in parallel, add filter gate, add more digital distortion & then hit the limiter hard at 10-15 Db GR and there you go.

When this was first released back in 2002, it caused a bit of a stir for two reasons. Firstly, it was very different to what Warp were releasing at the time. Electric Deaf has a dancefloor-friendly vibe, which was closer to the earlier Warp singles than the more experimental output they seemed to be promoting. Secondly, the incredibly loud mastering freaked more than a few people out, with the monstrously intense breaks and basslines causing serious speaker devastation. For a while, people questioned whether this was intentional or not, but after repeated listens of both tracks, it is clear that there is simply no other way this music should be heard.

Although this is heavy, destructive dancefloor music, both tracks also have touching melodies, which juxtopose perfectly with the percussive mayhem they battle with. The B side in particular also has some beautiful drifting pads, which gives the release far more substance than your average idm/jungle yarn. If you really want to blow your mind, try listening to this on a good set of headphones. It is quite an experience. A solid release.

I still wonder why nor Sote neither Warp fans have paid attention to the mighty strength of this release. I did like what Sote did next -"Xoxo Ep", at SF label Dielectric-, but I'm still waiting for a follow up of this hidden masterpiece of an unexplored electronic area: the fringe between old skool hardcore Acen style -the track is polyrhythmic and an odyssey in itself- and the most noisy breakcore around. Sote, if you ever read these words: WE WANT MORE OF THIS.