- Ian McDonnell, AKA Eomac, compiles dance floor-friendly techno tracks from his archive.
- Ian McDonnell has gone through a transformation in recent years. Since releasing 2016's Bedouin Trax, a hallucinatory LP that drew from a vast bank of Arabic and Islamic music, the Lakker member has used dance music as a tool to probe difficult questions. He has produced several records that attempt to reclaim the dance floor as a place for intellectual, political and spiritual exchange. (He's been particularly outspoken about misogyny.) These records, released through McDonnell's Eotrax label, include the primal dance piece "Temple Of The Jaguar," McDonnell's most recent album, Reconnect, and Lakker's Eris Harmonia EP. This output has been both mentally and aurally challenging, not quite fit for clubs. But Owning The Past is a reminder that McDonnell makes killer dance tracks, too.
The concept behind McDonnell's latest LP is straightforward. Owning The Past is a collection of tracks from McDonnell's archives, released so that he can move on creatively. Like 25122015 and Tabula Rasa, they represent an artistic purge. That's not to say these tracks aren't fully formed. McDonnell is a multi-referential and wide-ranging producer, which Owning The Past conveys more openly than any of his prior releases. Unconventional techno has been McDonnell's genre of choice in latter years, and there are various shades of it on display here, from the driving, Tresor-friendly "Mouth" and "AT3" to the monochrome expanse of "Hailed Emptiness" and the broken-down sounds of "SQWAW1" and "SQWAW2." There's also Latin house ("Ping"), scintillating electro ("Riddle") and an absolutely banging piece of glacial grime ("Sound The Horns").
The best moments are the quintessentially Lakker/Eomac tracks that show themselves in the glistening metallic sheen, wonky rhythms and beautifully discordant textures of "Block," "Hessa," "Plague Ship" and "The Biggest Swindle." They are riddled with a melancholic mood unique to McDonnell (and Dara Smith when writing as Lakker). "Untitled Rhythm" is the most cataclysmic and impressive of the lot––an off-cut, perhaps, from Reconnect. But the rollicking "Resort To Fun (Let's Dance Tonight)" delivers the album's defining moment and its ultimate message. Owning The Past is about dancing, escapism and having fun, but there remains an unshakable sense of foreboding that lingers in all of McDonnell's work.
Tracklist01. Mouth
02. Block
03. Basilisk
04. Riddle
05. DRVB
06. SQWAW1
07. SQWAW2
08. Untitled Rhythm
09. DS Rhythm
10. Ping
11. Sound The Horns
12. Forget The World
13. B-yazz
14. Resort To Fun (Let's Dance Tonight)
15. AT3
16. Hailed Emptiness
17. Plague Ship
18. Hessa
19. Druid's Dance
20. The Biggest Swindle