@@@ Shinichi Atobe: Love of Plastic 6 (DDS, 2022) Off this week’s Pitchfork’s 10 most reviewed albums of the week. The video clipped below sits at track 7 on the record and it’s a pretty lounge-y smooth techno recipe with some glitchy, insect action, a classy pumping arpeggio and that classic unt-sss drumbeat. This is for people with jobs who want to sweat the right amount, naimsayin’? A little bit of high frequency dubwise echo sauce and I feel that, it breaks up the beat and adds dimension. About a third of the way through another synth comes in and starts working against the rhythmic framework and it really takes off as a fully realized dancefloor banger. Still not a frantic tempo, but solid. I’m checking out the second track, Love of Plastic 1, and it’s a more standard less trippy adventure with a classic keyboard vamp working booties over the beats. This is not my favorite style of techno as I favor the more abstract stuff but Atobe has skills. He gets into the tasteful layering here bigly.
@@@ Pedro the Lion: Havasu (Polyvinyl, 2022) Also on the Pitchfork 10 most reviewed albums of the week. The track below is at 8 on the run list. It’s a melancholy indie guitar banger with arpeggiated guitar part and some indie lonesome recollection type vocals. It’s a tad self-serious for my taste but regular readers are aware of my conflicted relationship with indie music. It’s always has had an too important problem. I’ve nothing against Pedro the Lion, I’m sure he’s a good dude. With tunes like First Drum Set and Teenage Sequencer it looks set to be backward looking which is fine. I’m digging the First Drum Set because of its lyrical weirdness over the vibe of the video below.
Deep In the Music 