- Following the likes of A², Seafoam, Derek Carr and the Red Ember crew, Marco Repetto is another obscure name from dance music's past given a new audience by minimal's dedicated diggers. But where those artists were mostly active in the late '90s and early '00s, Repetto's career is longer and more eclectic. He was in the Swiss post-punk band Grauzone in the early '80s and, between the '90s and today, released everything from bonkers trance and loop techno to IDM and electro. His discography is now well picked over and most of the choice cuts are prohibitively expensive, which makes Uncoded Signals From Axodya a welcome issue of Bigeneric material.
The three tracks are from the mid-'90s but sound fresh and unusual on modern dance floors. They work with a pre-IDM sound drawing on early Detroit techno, dextrous syncopation and electro-compatible sound design. Yet for all their intricacies, these tracks are geared for the dance. "Atrex"—previously known as "Electrophoria"—offsets classic Detroit melancholy with a wormy bassline, both of which give way to an unexpected major key turnaround five minutes in, jumping effortlessly from a dour mood to smile-inducing energy. "NAV" also pairs distress with warmth, pitching good-natured bass and pads against cinematic breakdowns that sound like a tragedy in outer space. "Edrene" does it again, contrasting a barrel-rolling techno sequence with daydreaming pads.
TracklistA1 Atrex
B1 NAV
B2 Edrene