- The rhythms are what strike you first about Siete Catorce's music. As his name would suggest—7/14 could be a particularly obtuse time signature—the Mexican producer does some unusual things with them, finding a futuristic middle ground between Latin American dance styles and computer music abstraction. But his releases for the likes of NAAFI and Enchufada aren't just drum tools: they show an increasingly sophisticated sense of narrative. Agnosia, for the Greek label Hypermedium, might be his most fully formed record yet. Its four winding arrangements can take a while to sink in.
"Risa" doesn't quite deliver the hoped-for sci-fi hit. Its stuttering rhythms, heard in percussion and then clipped voices and chords, recall Sensate Focus, but the sound set is too woolly and the tempo too low for the thing to fully flow. "Canto" is sharper and better, its dry sounds giving off a cheeky Equiknoxx vibe (complete with birdcall) while divebomb bass ties a satisfying bow on the groove.
The mood switches on the B-side. "Susurro" announces the change with a minute of tense, gloomy atmospherics, and then a straighter beat running a good ten BPM faster. This one is the closest to properly banging, but even so Siete Catorce lets the arrangement wheel and weave before landing the killer blow. It comes in the form of a snarling drop a minute before the track's end, but it may have had more impact when placed earlier. On "Dialogo" the sectional structure periodically lands the sort of manic bassline you might hear in a Shackleton track. Bold and unplaceable, Siete Catorce's music often throws up these kinds of comparisons.
TracklistA1 Risa
A2 Canto
B1 Susurro
B2 Dialogo