- The veteran experimentalist takes a scalpel to dub techno on this alternately pretty and challenging LP.
- 25 years into his career, Paul Dickow still approaches electronic music like a kid taking apart an old radio to see how it works. Last year's Unexplained Sky Burners was an "archaeological dissection" of some of dance music's most ubiquitous samples, applying his prankish approach to chestnuts like the Amen break to see if they kept the spark that made them so exciting to generations of DJs. Just months later, his new album Graffiti In Space, for Constellation Tatsu, takes a scalpel to dub techno.
Dub techno usually refers to a surprisingly conservative strain of music, pioneered by Basic Channel and imitated for decades to come by producers using the same bedrock sounds. Half of Graffiti In Space's six tracks proceed in this vein: wistful chords run through oceans of delay, usually minor but not always, propelled by wispy beats and basslines that sound like electrical interference. "Remote Dub," "Daydream Space Graffiti," and "Surface Worlds" are splendid examples of dub techno at its most sedate, and should appeal to listeners who look to the genre for something adjacent to ambient music.
Given all the beauty on display, the roughness of twin behemoths "Fountain Of Youth" and "Message From Ouroboros" might initially come as a shock. The former seems to bend and buckle under its own weight, and the swells of bass are so overwhelming they swallow nearly everything else. By contrast, "Message From Ouroboros" sucks all the bass out of a TR-303 sequence and leaves it hovering in the midrange, instead counting on a mean-sounding woodblock thunk to hold down the low end. There's not a reassuring house chord in sight, just rusted metal and ominous siren shrieks.
Graffiti In Space burns with a mad scientist frenzy less suggestive of dub techno than Jamaican dub, to which Dickow most explicitly tips his hat on the cold, skeletal reggae of "In Space No One Can See Your Screen." Dickow unleashes himself on his equipment, every twist of the knob palpable, approaching this music with a physicality and presence that runs contrary to dub techno's tradition of secrecy and mystique. His joy in creation is apparent throughout Graffiti In Space, and even the more orthodox dub techno tracks step up to the implicit challenge of competing with the Chain Reaction catalog—and putting up a pretty good fight.
Dickow covers a huge amount of ground in just six tracks. Though Graffiti In Space's brisk 41-minute runtime might induce a bit of whiplash on the first couple listens as it toggles wildly between styles and moods, it keeps the listener grounded rather than letting them drift off into space. "Remote Dub" and its ilk would have no doubt been sublime if Dickow had allowed them sprawl to the lengths of Vladislav Delay's ambient-dub experiments circa Entain. Had he done that, Graffiti In Space might've simply numbed the listener to death instead of offering the delightful, devilishly challenging experience this album provides.
Tracklist01. Remote Dub
02. Fountain Of Youth
03. Daydream Space Graffiti
04. Message From Ouroboros
05. In Space No One Can See Your Screen
06. Surface Worlds