- For many techno producers, the album format presents a kind of identity crisis: do you stick to your guns, change your sound completely or just pad it with the usual ambient passages? Adrian Sandoval, the LA artist known as Developer, has chosen to fight fire with fire. His debut album offers up 25 tracks of slamming dance tunes (spread over two different formats) with absolutely no respite. It's an audacious move that, along with the lack of track titles, makes In Pure Form seem like the lump sum what he's been working on over the past year. The kicker is that it works as an album too, provided you don't mind the galloping pace.
This is Developer at his best, with no half-assed moments or by-the-numbers tools. It's all the more remarkable given Sandoval's uneven discography, where functional brutalism often gets the best of him. Here he nails every iteration of techno he tries, from reverb-heavy melodrama to squirming, bass-heavy numbers. On one track we get vocals and what sounds like a saxophone sample, while loose tribal rhythms, dusky Workshop vibes and atmospheres à la Aphex Twin are strewn about elsewhere. There's even a piano near the end.
What those disparate styles have in common is Sandoval's basic formula: powerful percussion, one or two melodic elements and a good sense of dynamics. This makes the LP a fun and consistently exciting ride, even if you listen to all 25 in one go. But the album wasn't quite designed that way: the first 12 are reserved for the vinyl version while the last 13 make up the digital. The two halves aren't terribly different—both offer the kind of consistency we've come to expect from Developer. That consistency is exactly what makes In Pure Form work so well.
Tracklist01. In Pure Form 01
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