Nautiluss - Liquid Sky

  • High-energy rave tracks from the Modeselektor camp.
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  • In 1994, Modeselektor member Sebastian Szary founded Seilscheibenpfeiler, a label that released precisely one record then went silent for 24 years. In June, Modeselektor announced that Seilscheibenpfeiler was coming back, now as a platform for "high quality dance music" from artists old and new. A few releases in, it's starting to feel like a revival of another Modeselektor project: 50 Weapons, a label whose rowdy spirit, if not its taste for experimentation, lives on in Seilscheibenpfeiler's first EPs. This continues with Liquid Sky, a pack of club- and festival-tailored tracks from Toronto's Graham Bertie, AKA Nautiluss. Liquid Sky is DJ fodder in ways both good and bad. You don't have to hear it on a big system to know how well it would work on one—the drums wallop, the basslines roar, the energy is at full-tilt. Stylistically, though, the tracks are pretty safe, which undermines some of their ravey attitude. "Reak," with its soaring rhythm and delirious synth lead, is the most distinctive one here. But the title track and "Inky," with their bright melodies and breaky rhythms, are more competent than they are inspired, with little we could point to as Bertie's distinctive voice. Modeselektor have done more than most to prove you can be fiercely original and unpretentiously fun at the same time—50 Weapons was a monument to that fact. Seilscheibenpfeiler is a different label, presumably with different goals, but it could do with some of that sense of adventure.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Liquid Sky B1 Reak B2 Inky
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