12 Jul 2012 — Henning Lahmann
Intriguing, pleasantly challenging new sounds from the West Coast here by young, enigmatic producer Austin Cesear who's reportedly hailing from the Bay Area, which is basically the only thing that's known about him/her. Alongside other US-based projects such as
Thought Broadcast and
Charlatan, Cesear is exploring the intersections between techno and house on the one side and noise and hypnagogic pop on the other, landing somewhere between
The Skaters at their most elusive circa mid-noughties and some run-down Berlin techno location at 4.30 am.
In itself this is of course nothing new or groundbreaking, as the fundaments of techno are by definition nothing but inherently noise. However, this kind of music smartly evades the overcome minimal/maximal dichotomy of electronic music, and in the wake of producers like Actress, Andy Stott, Kassem Mosse, Demdike Stare, or Hieroglyphic Being (there'd be a few more to be mentioned), this kind of noise/dance coalescence seems to be on the rise. At any rate, this particular undercurrent of contemporary electronic music appeared to be significant enough for
The Guardian to include it in their recent list
"The A-Z of pop in 2012", rather stupidly dubbing it "voodoo house" (we suppose the letter V was the only one still available), though they'd decided to define it as "the British response to witch house", which is not only arbitrary but indeed unfounded on every level. However, the connection made to hauntology is convincing, not least if you are willing to accept hypnagogic pop as some kind of (let's be careful here) American counterpart. Bring in Glasgow artist
TVO's latest work, and we almost have a trend.
London-based imprint
Public Information, responsible for putting out some of the most exciting experimental electronics of late, is of course particularly susceptible to the delineated conflation of sounds whose groundwork neatly spans a couple of decades, hence it makes a lot of sense that they've included hitherto unknown artist Austin Cesear on their remarkable roster. Moreover, his debut LP
Cruise Forever might well be the label's strongest release to date. In a way, the producer takes above concept to its logical conclusion, letting aimlessly meandering noise interludes interfere with a mesmerizing stream of after hour dancefloor trips encompassing anything from dub to house and techno that by themselves invariably carry a constant flow of muffled, unsettling and undefined sonic pulsation. All this results in a highly compelling piece of avant garde electronics which already is one of our favorite releases of 2012. Surely not to be missed.
Cruise Forever is out July 30. Pre-order now
over here.
