Autumns
I Didn’t Mean to Send it Twice
Exterminador Records
Irish producer Autumns has staked out a spot for their brand of body music, located somewhere between the ever-popular (and techno-crossover ready) instrumental variety, and much weirder mutant strains of the form. In fact Autumns can bounce between the two over the course of a single release, as evidenced by I Didn’t Mean to Send it Twice: some of its tracks seem geared for DJ playlists and dancefloor appeal, while others are far more fluid and off-kilter in their execution.
When it comes to the straight-ahead club EBM, Autumns keeps things pretty direct, positioning the swing and the groove at the forefront of their productions. “What Potential” has a squelchy bassline and lots of syncopated percussion to back up its fat kick drum, with plenty of variations in cymbal programming to keep it from wearing itself out over its runtime. It’s an approach that gets applied to “Autumns is Scum” in faithful fashion, with each track reading as a no-frills take on a classic style.
However it’s on the record’s less immediate cuts that Autumns’ personality becomes far more pronounced, while still maintaining a connection to the classic EBM template. “Without Clothes” goes the route of having its wormy synths modulate slightly in and out of tune, evoking some of the dryer mid-2000s anhalt acts like Jäger 90 but spiked with stretched and melted vocals that echo and drip through the stereo spectrum. Those shouted, processed and reconstituted voices appear again on the otherwise down-the-pipe stomp of “A Brief History on Response”, contrasting with the more lugubrious and grave tone of the evocatively titled “Public Toilet Panic Attack”, a song that breaks up the beats and leans into some squealing horn sounds that recall the dubbier side of the Klinik in their wooziness. Those horns also appear again on “I Just Wanted to Know”, and are set against the track’s arpeggiating bass, claps and synth cowbells for a more playful vibe.
As a release I Didn’t Mean to Send it Twice goes down pretty smooth, offering a bit of variety between its left-of-center and more straightforward material. Like many producers working in the current EBM scene globally they show a lot of classic inclinations without being beholden to a specific tradition or set of influences. They sample, hybridize and reconfigure sounds, or just go for the jugular when it suits them, and their releases are all the better for it.
