Various – Advanced Public Listening 01

MINDBLOWING Phoenecia on b1,try it at least for that !

This compilation is mostly from IDM's left field, i.e., not the pretty, precious Bola/Plaid/Boards of Canada/Ulrich Schnauss-inspired end of the genre, but more the kooky, bangy, post-Autechre branch, as demonstrated by the inclusion of tracks by Luke Vibert, Uwe Schmidt (Atom), and Freeform. While all the contributions reflect creativity, are technically competent, and are quite representative of the genre in this time period, most of them suffer from a degree of emotional detachment, a bit too much quirk for quirk's sake, trying too hard to impress the laptop geeks and forgetting that a chord here or there, or even some danceable beats would be the glue that would put these tracks over the top and make them more accessible than alienating.

That said, Thomas Fehlmann's contribution, unavailable elsewhere, is a little different, being much more in the typical semi-glitchy, continuous-beat dub techno style he's embraced since the early 2000s. The real standout, though, is Phoenecia's "Conummity Coolge", a mindbending synthesized simulation of driving in the pouring rain down a very wet road, windshield wipers pounding on their highest setting. It's "hard" and trancey, but I've never heard anything like it. Every time I listen to it, I get really absorbed by it, which hardly ever happens for me with this genre.