- The first release from Acting Press, CC Not's Geo Fi, gave listeners a lot to think about. If you spend your life up to your ears in dance music, the way the Berlin/Vancouver trio set things askew was tantalizing—it's rare that a record sounds so wonderfully wrong. On Stations Of The Elevated, a new EP from Berlin-based CC Not affiliate PLO Man, it feels like Acting Press are putting the house back in order.
That makes it a more immediate pleasure, though no less intoxicating. On paper, the tracks themselves aren't wildly unique—built from hissing ambience, extra-wide kicks, pad stabs and pockets of breakbeat, they bring to mind the dreamier side of Sex Tags Mania. And yet the compositions themselves stand apart. On the A-side, "Rare Plastic" and "Nearly Invisible" function as one epic piece moving from wound-up syncopation to straighter, tenser 16th-note clicks. From the shifting decay on the sub-bass to the proliferating fauna in the ambient bed, PLO Man's every move sounds deliberate but not overwrought, confident but not self-congratulatory.
"Type Damascus" is both airier and harder-hitting. The EP's pads show up shaved down to a wisp, but its drums have been turbocharged, thrusting us headlong into the rave for an instant. Impossibly, those pads win out, and for a good three minutes, it feels like floating in the ocean with a massive hangover—you can't quite stitch a thought together, but there's no place you'd rather be.
TracklistA1 Rare Plastic
A2 Nearly Invisible
B1 Type Damascus