- Meditative techno for heady dance floors.
- Norman Nodge, a Berghain resident since 2005, plays to the world's headiest dance floors, usually found in pitch-black rooms full of dancers lost in their own heads. He may have had these settings in mind when making "Gathering," a mind-melting percussive techno track on his new Ostgut Ton EP, Embodiment. But where many hypnotic techno tunes use bleeps and synth tones to mess with your brain, Nodge does it with drums. The rattling percussion moves around the stereo field while the kick drum thuds, the only flash of colour being a few dull bleeps that land on the downbeat. This track is sinister yet funky, a snakecharming groover that recalls the excellent drum tracks once found on labels like Axis and Plus 8. On an outlet that's become known for more immediate sounds, it's great to hear this kind of subtlety.
The rest of the EP is more in line with the high-energy sounds associated with Berghain and Ostgut Ton. "Discipline" gallops with the force of a peak-time bomb, while "Tacit Knowing" is deeper, humming and screeching as the groove rolls. Only "Embodiment" visits the heads-down mood of "Gathering," cloaking a shuffling rhythm in the dubby haze heard during Ostgut Ton's Scenario years. Modern techno could use more meditative tracks like this.
TracklistA1 Tacit Knowing
A2 Discipline
B1 Gathering
B2 Embodiment