Autocreation – Mettle

Mark Van Hoen was on a creative roll in the early 90s's. This is dark techno electronica not your atypical dance floor material but rhythmic machine bleeping with ambient textures processing in the receding light. Pulsing with machine like pulses!
I surmise Mark was tweaking his analog modulars, digital synths accented by TR style drum machines keeping the machine like movements moving forward. IF you like his other project Locust (Weathered Well) think of this as a twin sibling to that brilliant album. NO vocals NO guitars NO 90's wailing vocal samples just pure unadulterated man machine interface treading the unknown waters......

This production is a trip to the depths of a dark forest , a journey filled with shadowy and also relaxing moments , listen to this in solitude and let the Album fill your imagination with new adventures. "Dark smile" and "Bone" are my favorite tracks here , both take me on a obscure trip (without consuming shits).

Good to hear that the sound quality on the vinyl is up to par; the digital files of the re-issue sound exactly the same as the Inter-Modo release, which is enormously disappointing, as the original CD is very quiet.

Top music, obscure sound and the best techno track ever "justice loop".

Autocreation only ever released one album, METTLE, but what an album it is, full of dark, atmospheric ambience. The deep thrums of "Dark Smile," for instance, sound like radiowaves lost somewhere in the cosmos, until the tentative reply comes. "Snatch" has an urgent propulsion to it, heavy and insistent, while "Silver" goes for all blips, all the time (except for some shrill overtones). Mark Van Hoen's handiwork is all over this release, but even so, it still establishes its own personality, like the ghostly synths that hover above the steady beat of "Tomato Dawn" or the laser battle that starts off "Justice Loop." "Protoski" takes the claustrophobia and menace down a few notches, but "Bone" ends the album again dark and deep, with reverberating percussion, and a synth line that sounds like an emergency beacon. If you're only going to make one album, might as well make it a stunner!

Very VERY fine blippy, DARK ambient techno/downbeat. I wonder if Mettle influenced the Node supergroup at all? They produce a similar "analogue-synth-based" (well, very WARM) dark, melodic ambient, only with very little in the way of drums. Mettle is rather more repetitive, and the slow, steady building and falling style of arrangement used on pretty much every track, may put off those who can't settle into the mood. But still, excellent ambient electronica. Recommended highly. Best track = Protoski.

For fans of hypnotic, minimal techno, "mettle" plays like wallpaper, or nature sounds, or a walk through a dimly lit forest. It drones, and whirrs, and thumps along in a dark, shadowy fashion. Since it prefigured most contemporary minimalist techno "mettle" sidesteps cliches associated with the style. The album has a unique, memorable sound for those with a taste for the genre.