- I bloody love synths. Thick, wildly LFO'd leads, swirling, evolving pads, plinky FM bells drenched in reverb and delay, I'll have the lot. Well, maybe not: I can't get satisfaction from hackneyed patches like the two-a-penny sawtooth basslines that you hear throughout the charts. No sir, they've got to be fresh to be cool. Go listen to "Telephasic Workshop" by Boards of Canada, and you'll know what I'm talking about.
The sixth and final installment in the Colours series on Posthuman's fledgling Balkan Vinyl label is full of great synth work. Plaid feature, which should give you some idea; their knack for unique sounds is, well, perhaps not quite matched by the others, but their persistent, whooping unison which sits over a slow, thumping breakbeat, thickened up by an evolving collection of riffs, is all expertly programmed, and it's carried on throughout the rest. Secondo creates an airy limbo from what sounds like diffused bells, chromatic ringing and a straight beat with other scratchy soundclips bouncing around in "Kvarner Bay." Like Posthuman's "The Ottowa Object," a breathy pad fills in the gaps between sharp percussion, but "Ottowa" includes a menacing, monosyllabic bassline and is post-apocalyptic, a lone mechanoid patrolling the wastelands. Marco Passarani takes a French mash-up and adds dementedly joyful claustrophopia. It's the least emotive thing here, but perhaps the most stylistically interesting.
The CD which ships with the vinyl includes, further to these four, a trio of remixes of "Ottowa." All lose the four-to-the-floor thump but keep Posthuman's foggy pad which swirls around various rhythmic features. Hrdvsion tells a bleak tale of an industrial, Matrix-like landscape. Echaskech evokes Vector Lovers with a lush, hymnal and golden scene of shafts of sunlight from heaven, and squelches bursting into little clusters around the edges. LJ Kruzer's mix is unsettling in the way it broods, at once morose, then hopeful, then foreboding. Not only the creativity, but also the emotions, shine through beautifully throughout the whole record.
Tracklist Vinyl-A1 Plaid - Fum
Vinyl-A2 Secondo - Kvarner Bay
Vinyl-B1 Posthuman - The Ottowa Object
Vinyl-B2 Marco Passarani - Salty Vibes
CD-01 Plaid - Fum
CD-02 Secondo - Kvarner Bay
CD-03 Posthuman - The Ottowa Object
CD-04 Marco Passarani - Salty Vibes
CD-05 Posthuman - The Ottowa Object (Hrdvsion Remix)
CD-06 Posthuman - The Ottowa Object (Echaskech Remix)
CD-07 Posthuman - The Ottowa Object (Ljkruzer Remix)