IDK
IDK One
self-released
It’s shocking to think that someone with as many irons in the fire as Daniel Myer still has hitherto unrevealed side projects and aliases. Even leaving aside his current primary outlets – from an outsider’s perspective I’d name Haujobb, Architect, and Rendered as the most active – there are at least three other handles under which his music’s been released in the past year alone (DSTR, Radioaktivists, Liebknecht), and that doesn’t even factor in his moonlighting with Covenant. With that byzantine discography established, it’s interesting to consider how Myer’s chosen to identify IDK One, an archival set of tracks which precede, yet don’t quite fit into the continuity of Rendered.
In Myer’s own words, “Before there was Rendered, there was this. Some of these tracks are very old, some were done right before I met Clement [Perez] and we started Rendered together.” Obviously, given Perez’s absence by definition the material collected under the IDK name is different from the rumbling and disquieting techno 12″s the duo have released since 2017. And even though these thirteen tracks don’t have the unified aesthetic of that project – the decayed, high pitched drones with thread through powernoise clatter on “siBeRia” is a far cry from the slinky robo-funk of “pOweR” – it’s clear that they spoke to a desire to stake a new claim Myer had recently located.
Despite the dark techno mood that loosely connects the IDK tracks, they do feel of a different cast than Myer’s existing work. Although “tHirD waTcH” (replete with disturbing torture samples, presumably from the TV show of the same name) gets traction from placing plaintive, simple keyboard lines above swarming percussion, it feels far removed from the deployment of similar instrumentation in Architect. Even the relentless EBM/techno thudding of the Liebknecht project doesn’t quite jibe with these pieces either; sparse tunes like “kS 1” have a restless hunger without parallel in Myer’s back catalog, while “wiLlenbeRg”‘s pairing of icy blasts with acoustic scrapes and plucks recalls the proto-dubstep extravagance of Various Production.
Not quite a simple house cleaning exercise, not entirely a side project with its own identity – it’s perhaps easy to understand why Myer opted for the IDK moniker for this release. If he’s uncertain of exactly how it fits within his oeuvre, then it’s perhaps easy to understand why trainspotters like ourselves might be similarly flummoxed. You can approach IDK One as potential club fodder or a preamble to the more formally arranged Rendered bangers, but we’d like to think of it as a peak at the sketchpad of one of the post-industrial world’s most prolific and accomplished producers.
