Richard Devine - Risp

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  • Recent efforts by Xhin, Perc, Ekoplekz and other like-minded producers have whet the whistles of techno heads for fussy, noisy music with the ADHD of classic '90s IDM but the uncompromising sound design of 2011. Lo and behold, Richard Devine suddenly sounds more relevant than he has in a decade. Devine's newest work trades in the same ultra-detailed, constantly shifting micro-landscapes as Xhin's Sword, though his impulses are driven less by techno's eternal beat and more by some sort of internalized, indefatigable energy. This is the sort of electronic music that feels like it's making itself up as it goes along, Devine building walls of clicks and rumbles then tearing them down, letting the infrastructure fracture and splinter every which way. "Plonked Spectral" rummages through its rat-pack assortment of sounds at a much faster clip than "Oxin2lin" before completely falling apart, while the latter limps on a sorta-there bump like a malfunctioning MRI machine. "Varseop" condenses the messy sprawl into a sprightly four minutes, carving out a pseudo-rhythm with beats that unravel rapidly like shuffling decks of playing cards. Finally giving into quantization, the Drumcell remix of "Varseop" throws a discernible techno thump underneath Devine's incredible sound design, simplifying it for functional effect: it's hard to say whether or not it's an improvement, but it's a nice change after three tracks of aggressively fastidious experimentation. Uncompromising but undeniably impressive, Devine isn't about to throw the listener a bone, but he really doesn't have to when the music is this breathlessly captivating.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Plonked Spectral A2 Oxin2lin B1 Varseop B2 Varseop (Drumcell Remix) Digital: York Capicitor Digital: Renesequence
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