[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 188 ]

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KLIMEKMilk & Honey(Kompakt)cd$ 15.98

None of us here really like "techno" all that much. That's why we were always so attracted to the mutant strains of techno that manage to turn what often to us seems to be vapid, plastic dance music into cool and creepy, murky weirdness. Chain Reaction's brand of so-called "heroin house" for one. And of course Kompakt's beloved minimal thump. That German label's output was however always really close to being just straight up four on the floor house music, but somehow they always found a way to be sonically creative enough to turn their techno into something new and exciting. And then something weird started happening. The folks at Kompakt called it "pop ambient", a new strain of techno that removed the beat from the equation entirely, relying more on thick organic swells and crystalline melodies than beats. Occasionally, those melodies would fragment and shift and loop and form abstract almost-rhythms, but more often than not, notes and chords would just hover, suspended in an ambient ether, humming and vibrating, shimmering and buzzing. Such is the case with this new Klimek record (an artist who had a track on the Pop Ambient 2004 compilation we also made Record Of The Week a little while back). Spare and sparse and elegently gorgeous. The source material sounds like it must be a guitar. But it's as if the notes were extracted one at a time from the guitar. No strumming or fingerpicking. Just the timbre of a steel string vibrating and disturbing the molecules around it. Removed from its natural setting, these notes sound completely alien, althought they remain rich and organic. Klimek takes these notes and drops them delicately into a warm sonic bath, letting them settle next to complimentary notes, some notes dissolving into nothingness, or disturbing the tranquil stillness, sending off gradually decaying sonic ripples. Imagine the abstract glitch-guitar technique of Fennesz, the underwater ambience of Oval, the quiet parts by your favorite post-rock band, all stretched out, melodies pulled apart until, the notes are almost far enough apart that the melody that birthed it is just a shadowy memeory, a sonic trace, leaving a gorgeous and shimmery landscape of sonorous languor.