Trance and minimal break through the ambient techno murk in the latest yearly transmission from the Acting Press camp.
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There are a few things about the Berlin label Acting Press that might frustrate the casual fan. Between the barrage of new aliases and the shifting collaborations of its founders and their hard-headed, vinyl-only policy, there are moments when the label seems to teeter dangerously close, as Will Lynch suggested in a review last year, to being a bit snobby, maybe even elitist. But it's hard to fault the label when their releases are so goddamn good. In typical Acting Press fashion, C3D-E's latest release materialized out of the ether with some of the label's sharpest and cleanest dance floor cuts to date.
All four tracks pack a punch, but the A-side has the real floor-shakers. The references on Scattered Radiation are—of course—to '90s electronica, but it's a different palette than the label typically paints with. Opener "A Model Of Behavior" pulls a fast one. It starts with the usual ambient techno sound design before the undulating pads are overtaken by a bright, polyester synth line and the clipped restraint of microhouse. This is what it might have sounded like if Move D and Villalobos linked up for an early Smallville release.
The other surprise is "Internal Content Generator" which harkens back to the days when trance was just as likely to be fast techno as it was slow and dubby (a period documented recently by Young Marco). The come-up tingle of the chords and synth are mixed to sound muted. The excitement is there, but it's more like you're whispering in the queue, nervous if the bouncer will let you in.
The flip is a bit closer to what we've heard from C3D-E in the past. We've got the mosquito swamp hum of "Vanishing Past," and "Objective Colour (BBM Edit)," which throws back to the 2020 Acting Press masterpiece under the name INT*era. C3D-E is usually pulling the label away from the club and into the realm of stoner electronics. Scattered Radiation shakes off only some of that half-lidded attitude, but also proves that C3D-3 can bang it out with the best of them.
TracklistA1 A Model Of Behaviour
A2 Internal Content Generator
B1 Objective Colour (BBM Edit)
B2 Vanishing Past