Gerry Read creats Patterns

'Patterns'

Instra:metal helped build the bridge between techno and dubstep that, at this point, seems completely natural.  By refining the marriage of techno’s forceful impetus with dubstep’s brooding ethos, Instra:mental (along with Martyn, Shed ect.) helped unite the German and British electronic music scenes, epitomized by tracks like “Vicodine”.  The muffed out, humble kick drum, and the insistent pulse that urges you toward the floor, capture the numb sensation one feels at a party you know you ought to be having fun at but simply cannot.  The occasional clav echoes into nothingness and you remember why you’ve been refusing to join the vacuous party that surrounds you.

Gerry Read’s “Patterns” begins by navigating that same space.  Muffled pulses surround.  Humid textures abound. But rather than submitting to the claustrophobic emptiness of the club, the track walks over to the bar, politely places its drink back onto the bar, straightens up its tie, and jumps headlong into the party.  The synths surge to the top of the mix, thrashing wildly.  It’s difficult to tell whether these are happy or violent movements but one suspects that such distinctions are besides the point.

A plucked melody soon follows, confining that childlike joy one gets from dancing alone and setting it to song.  Discreet depression gives way to dastardly delirium so seamlessly, one wonders why every wallflower beat-head isn’t thrashing about.

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Robert Hood gets interviewed

Robert Hood, considered by many the father of minimal techno, gives an in depth interview with a local Detroit radio station.  While minimal techno is considered by many to be functional, repetitive club music, given the context that surrounds it, Hood's latest release on his M-Plant lable, Omega takes on a spiritual and political depth that most overblown anthems tend to only heavy-handedly grapple with.  What might seem like nihilistic, if sinful music to some seems to come from a genuinely religious place in Robert Hood.

Hood disucesses his middle-class upbringing in Detroit, chronicling his youth going to basement parties and listening to black and white artists playing side by side on the radio.  He goes on to describe the experience of having his city literally collapse all around him.  Starting with the crack epidemic, on through the disintegration of the job market, Hood interestingly points out that as many parts of the country were experiencing increased growth and opportunity, Detroit has grown increasingly segregated.

It is not surprising, then, that Hood's latest release draws its inspiration from the early 1970s film The Omega Man, staring Charlton Heston—a mediation on loneliness and faith in the face of absolute decimation.  Based on the 1950s novel I am Legend, the film confronts day-to-day life in post-apocalyptic reality.  The parallels are everywhere, and with song titles like "Are You God?" and "The Plague (Cleansing Maneuvers)" this is not your typical club record.

Expertly crafted and lovingly curated this is the sound of a devout man intent on spreading his message the only way he knows how—through the sound-system.

NIGHTVISION4MOVEMENT by Angela D