Adam Rå
The Poisoned Chalice
X-IMG
Polish producer Adam Rå makes his X-IMG debut with the appropriately ominous The Poisoned Chalice, showcasing a lot more thoughtfulness than many of his peers in the waning techno-industrial crossover scene. Rå’s strength comes not only from programming solid rhythms and designing rich textures for his tracks, but in finding ways to make them musical, as opposed to being collections of loops and samples. The obvious examople is the title track, where a pumping bassline and percussion are overlaid by a ghostly vocal track, always lurking behind the thumping dancefloor arrangement and making the song feel compellingly haunted. Opener “Scars” does more with less, starting with a fairly standard techno-body setup, but subtly building up the surrounding atmosphere with a subtlety that stands in contrast to its kicks and synthlines. Especially great are the trance-like touches that set off “Cold Steel” and “The Smell of Rope”; the former building and breaking back down in organic goa-esque fashion, the latter using a gated vocal sound as a lead to tickle the ear, and matching the ducking and compression that push its groove to the finish line.
Serpentskin
Serpentskin EP 1
Fleisch
While radically different from the last release we caught from Alison Lewis under her Zanias handle, the debut EP of her Serpentskin side project shouldn’t come as any surprise to those who’ve been paying attention to the programming flitting in the corners of the Chrysalis and Ecdysis LP, not to mention her work as a remixer and those she’s tapped to remix her own work. If Ecdysis took the reflective and spiritual themes of Chrysalis into the ambient/chill room, Snakeskin finds her not only making a beeline for the center of the main room dancefloor at peak hour, but also travelling back to the late 90s when trance, specifically of the euphoric blend, absolutely dominated clubs years before the dreaded “EDM” marketing ploy. The interplay between wordless, cooing vocals and the icy skiffs of programming on opener “Swallow The Flame Down” feel very much of a piece with the textural interplays we’ve seen in Zanias records for nearly a decade now, but with all of the galloping builds and crests of classic trance accentuated. Savvy heads who’ve noted Lewis’ collaborations with Alex Akers of the forever underappreciated Forces project will hear Lewis’ spin on Forces style rave anthems on pieces like the fantastically titled “Basking In The Light At Heaven’s Gate” (speaking of ’90s flashbacks). Both as a vocalist and as a producer it’s a milieu Lewis sounds incredibly at ease with, both reinaugurating the original era and records it pays homage to, and indicating just how much more she might have to show us even after the variety of her extant work.
