- Unless you're particularly knowledgeable on Moscow's mid-'90s electronic underground, your first encounter with Species Of Fishes was probably the four tracks Nina Kraviz included on her fabric mix. The outré electronica of Igor Kolyadniy and Vitaly Stern stood out for its resonances with the techno Kraviz typically releases on her label Trip. A reissue of Species Of Fishes' second album, Trip Trap, is a good introduction to Kraviz's new GALAXIID label, which moves away from Trip's dance floor explorations towards "experimental, ambient and psychedelia."
In today's world of smartphone swipes and virtual reality headsets, keyboard-referencing track titles like "[Backspace]" and "[Alt+Tab]" can seem quaint, even if the tracks themselves never do. Though there's a track called "The Web," the album emerged well before its creators could easily connect with other artists and scenes in cyberspace. Still, they were far from isolated. "Health 100%" toys with the sort of splenetic cut-up breakbeats Squarepusher made in the mid-'90s, and "[Esc]" would fit snugly onto one of Warp's Artificial Intelligence compilations. But the lumpen rhythm and foreboding drones of "Bfg9000 Vs. Barons Of Hell," for example, feel like an embryonic strain of music evolving through random mutations.
The title of "Crash Recovery" continues the album's loose computer theme, but the glowing synths speak as much to science fiction as the technology of its era. Intermittently fascinating and worthy of attention as Trip Trap is, it's not quite an overlooked classic. It would have been a shame, but not a tragedy, if it had remained in obscurity. But it says something about Species Of Fishes' music that, even when one of electronic music's foremost tastemakers is shining a light on it, the sense of mystery throughout the album remains.
Tracklist01. [Init]
02. Health 100%
03. [Ctrl+S]
04. Bfg9000 Vs. Barons Of Hell
05. [Esc]
06. [Alt+Tab]
07. The Web
08. [Backspace]
09. Crash Recovery
10. Access Depth