- Even taking a broad view of what house and techno can constitute, you'd be hard pushed to label Madteo's latest as either style. It's barely dance music. "Insider" is an eight-minute patchwork of stuttering synth stabs and barely-there kick drums, lashed together but lacking in forward momentum. This extremely limited palette is a far cry from his sample-heavy Noi No album for Sähko, but Madteo does a surprising amount with limited tools. "Insider" has little groove to speak of, though one does occasionally surface and then arbitrarily disappear. The focus is not on movement but the materiality of the sounds themselves: the artificial clucking of synths; the stop-start motion as the track hauls itself into a groove before going off-kilter; the occasional clap thrown in like a treat.
"The Hidden Hand Principle" is more identifiably dance music, though it's techno slowed to a sluggish pace, which only magnifies its sparseness. It has a trebly drone, a thin stab, a bassline that never coalesces into a groove, and a vocal sample low in the mix. Despite the paucity of its elements, "The Hiding Hand Principle" contains very little space, so the parts swirl together claustrophobically. It feels heated and oppressive, and not so different from the high-pressure hardware jams on Laurel Halo's recent Chance Of Rain. "Pram Reset" is the biggest curveball of all, a mucky eight-minute piece of Sunn O)))-inspired drones, vinyl pops and feedback.
TracklistA Insider
B1 The Hidden Hand Principle
B2 Pram Reset