Buttechno - Tepliy Stan

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  • Buttechno is the project of a producer from the outskirts of Russia, named Pavel Milyakov. He looks after the label Johns' Kingdom, but he's probably found his widest audience in the fashion world due to his creative partnership with Moscow designer Gosha Rubchinskiy, whose runway shows he soundtracks with bracing techno and experimental music. Rubchinskiy and Milyakov are part of a fertile Moscow subculture, a raw cocktail of street fashion, roughshod electronic music and skateboarding. A Western analog could be Will Bankhead (Milyakov formerly focused on design), at least in the way his Trilogy Tapes imprint interacts with the hip clothing and grainy videos put out by Palace. The difference with Buttechno and Johns' Kingdom is evident in a look at Milyakov's Tumblr—his crew functions in an environment of grim highrises and decrepit Soviet architecture, making their louche nihilism feel more honest than that of their First World counterparts. Of course, none of that would matter if Buttechno wasn't an intriguing producer. Though the first Buttechno release arrived last year, Milyakov's already demonstrated an uncommon range. His AW 16 soundtrack for Rubchinskiy demonstrated a knack for sound design, the patient experimental pieces recalling Mike Shiflet, while the 1984 7-inch tried on new wave. Milyakov's bread and butter, though, is roughed-up techno and electro, and the Tepliy Stan EP might be his most straightforward effort yet. "Strainn" funks up an atonal, modulating synth, landing somewhere near Drexciya's noisier side-projects or Randomer's awesome "Huh." Ekman, who labors in the storied tradition of Holland's West Coast sound, is a classy choice of remixer, and he flips the script ever so slightly. His version is electro but with a succession of kicks starting every four bars, and Ekman adds an unsettling synth drone to give things a paranoid feel. On "Trance T," Milyakov provides a slice of charging, Detroit-style techno. Its centerpiece is a careening, madcap synth lead that makes the otherwise straight-ahead track instantly memorable. Milyakov wraps up the EP with some dubby, chilled electro ("Augustus") and "Lady D," a noisy, beatless piece overlaid with a reading of Mary Lee Hall's "Turn Again To Life." That poem finds the author encouraging friends to go dutifully about "these dear unfinished tasks of mine" in the event of her death, which falls in line with the "hope I die before I get old" attitude of Milyakov's projects. In an interview, a Johns' Kingdom member said that "[the label] on the outside is a kind of a cassette label, a gig. There's also the Johns' Kingdom within—something no one will ever know of. And any given moment all of that can disappear, because death is beautiful." Let's hope they release a few more records before fading away.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Strainn A2 Strainn (Ekman Remix) B1 Trance T B2 Augustus 13 B3 Lady D
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