- Dance tracks typically move forwards, but Ricardo Donoso's songs sound like they bloom outwards. Beginning with a lone synth figure, the tracks on As Iron Sharpens Iron, One Verse Sharpens Another unfurl and contract like organic, breathing entities. "Diagonal Environment" opens with a buoyant synth passage and breezy pads, over which additional lines are layered and peeled away. There's a subtle momentum to "Diagonal Environment," despite its barely-there percussion, as synths dart back and forth and strings swell gently. On "Affirmation," kosmische synths are layered to panoramic effect, and on "The Sphinx," synths, strings and percussion spiral away from the core loop to form a gripping dance track.
The most immediate reference point on Donoso's debut LP for Digitalis, Assimilating The Shadow, was Oneohtrix Point Never. Here, on the first of two records that make up Donoso's new album, the similarity lies in his rebuke to generic snobbery. Where Daniel Lopatin reclaimed the timbres of new age music, Donoso does something similar with—whisper it—trance. He borrows liberally from the unfashionable genre, incorporating its hyperactive arpeggios and processed vocal samples into "Digital Environment," its ascending synths into "The Sphinx," and it's liquid, throbbing crescendos into "Affirmation." Yet As Iron Sharpens Iron is exuberant rather than cheesy, and though its inclination towards the dance floor is certainly more pronounced than on his last album, Donoso never loses sight of that record's synthesised serenity.
Tracklist01. Affirmation
02. The_Sphinx
03. Diagonal_Environment
04. The Old Straight Track