Various – Death Of Vinyl Revolutions Vol. 1

Ah, yes, Techno Primitives. Whereas House seems to go for longer repetitive phrases, these groups keep the cycles short and tight, but inject into them a wide variety of tonal metamorphosis. It does what you expect it to do - goads your body into movement, but also entertains the ears with some charming phrases and much variety. DIN's "Water Sports (Olympic)" has a tune which works it's way into the mind - simple, deceptively passive, this sounds so advanced compared with a lot of more commercial records, you'd never think it was released way back in '93. The first INFOR/MATION's two is less endearing, pasting a variety of sounds over an often fragmentary drum onslaught. "Trance Induction" is the more passive track here, a muted toned exploration over strict kick beat. AUTOMATA tend towards the overdriven kick drum sound later explored by the likes of SURGEON and REGIS for their first track, although to their credit to grizzle that hazes around the percussion has a very deliberate sound - synthetic? The second takes a while to reach it's unvarying core beat, moving from a long atmospheric introduction back to similar at the end. DIGITAL POODLE - the flagship group of the DOVE label - bring us their two. Well, "Crack", released as a single, seems to concentrate on exploratory sounds over the top of an occasionally changing beat backdrop. Great ideas and some impressive sounds, but I don't see how they chose it for individual release! "Output Expander" would probably have been more popular - a central core of beat and humming rhythm over which percussion rattles and clatters - hypnotic and alluring. The final two tracks are from PROTOZOA - "Chameleon" & "Brainchild". The former is a confused mess of noises set around a central beat - it's nice to hear such a charming mess of a track - very appealing, seeming to be permanently internally competative with it's own noises. The latter, and album closer starts of with a dark moodiness which is almost Ethno-Ritual. It maintains it's moodiness throughout, sounding less like Techno than a sort of unexplored SCORN copyist circa "ZandER".
Not really mainstream gutless Techno, these groups take time in exploring their environment.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.