- Irresistible techno with a giddy rush.
- Regina Leather used to go by the name Cosmic Metal Mother, a project where Paolo Di Nola made sumptuous deep house and disco. Portraits Of A Collective Hallucination is not deep house or disco but you already knew that, because it comes on Karenn's red-hot Voam label. This EP is slamming, knock-everything-out-of-its-way techno, with a flair for dynamics and improvisation that seems directly inspired by Blawan and Pariah's well-loved project.
Di Nola's spin on it revolves around glitch. He says the EP is concerned with "the tones and timbers generated during the breakdown of machinery and the signals emitted erroneously during malfunction," which you can hear in opener "Tip," with a lead melody that stutters and flashes. The whole thing is erratic, especially when the track suddenly stops and re-emerges as a slightly softer Detroit-influenced affair. The rest of the EP isn't as strange, but each track is loaded with detail and sudden intrusions that could startle or tickle the keen listener. The runaway rimshots on "Comunicazione Uno" are drenched in reverb, while strange noises writhe between beats on "Comunicazione Duo." The gentle closer "Industrial Collapse" is the outlier, sounding like Shed floating on a cloud. But aside from that, Di Nola strikes the same careful balance as the other releases on Voam: hard-as-nails dance music with a sense of levity and, most importantly, freedom, capturing the giddy rush of early techno with sound design chops from 2020.
Tracklist01. Tip
02. Comunicazione Uno
03. Comunicazione Due
04. Industrial Collapse