Ntogn - Sathurnus

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  • Last month, the Swedish techno artist Ntogn made an announcement to his Facebook followers. "In less than a month I will wake up to my 10,000th day of life," he said. "To honor these vital days, the days that have shaped what I am, what I do and will do in the future, I want to create a testament, to mold my inner self in sounds without any compromise." That testament is Sathurnus, an open-ended release to which new tracks will be added incrementally "during the coming 832 days," all of them available for free on Bandcamp. Even if Ntogn's cosmic goth vibe is a bit much for you, Sathurnus is well worth a spin. Paula Temple said she was "floored" when she heard the first track, "Ziggurath," and it's easy to see why: this is fierce, artistic techno that sounds like little else out there. That one and "Ba'al" share an arresting quality: they literally sound like machines. What you're hearing doesn't sound like an arrangement of loops—it's like a field recording of some hulking mass of gears and valves, gurgling away at what just happens to be 130 BPM. "Thelema," a collaboration with the artist Skymn, has the same odd effect, thudding to a groove as irregular as it is intuitive, like the rhythm of waves against a ship. All three are lovingly crafted pieces of music, not the kind of throwaways you might expect from a free release. If they're any indication of what's to come, it will be a pleasure to catch Ntogn's "sonic castings" as they bubble up.
  • Tracklist
      01. Ziggurath 02. Thelema feat. Skymn 03. Ba'al
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