- Powerful acid and electro.
- Good dance music encourages participation. People clap and shout, add percussion on their empty glass, hear different messages in the samples or envision new possibilities within the space of a sonic experience. Gesloten Cirkel's latest outing for the budding Barcelona-based DIY imprint Selvamancer provokes responses like these even without a nightlife setting. He makes straight-up club tracks, but they're dense, detailed and hypnotic enough to work purely on record—which makes his latest EP, I Live In The Midwest, feel more like an accomplished mini-album than just a dance floor-ready 12-inch. Gesloten Cirkel is supposedly from Russia and emerged out of the Hague scene, though, so in what sense does he live in the Midwest?
It opens with the title track, made from pounding percussion, breathy gasps and hard-hitting acid bass squelch. "Everything for the Dev" is the percussive electro workout that opens up the field for the rest of the record, which gets increasingly psychedelic and experimental, wrenching apart space for your own inspired contributions. Notably, this occurs through the processing pulse of "A Better House," and deepens with "J-Chant," a tune obviously composed for deep dance trance states, repeating subconscious commands through what sounds like a didgeridoo (a sacred indigenous instrument of the Aboriginal people of Northern Australia, which requires the same circular breathing techniques as raving all night long). Album closer "Balls" exudes just that—the ability to go deep into a trance of rhythm, get lost in beatless revelation, and get right back into it.
Is the Midwest a state of mind? Can it be conjured from anywhere? European electronic music artists appropriating the Midwest is certainly not new. At the same time, the godfathers of techno (Kraftwerk) are from Germany, so perhaps we can determine the authenticity of the music based on how properly it empowers us to believe in alternate futures and transcend the circumstances of our lives, wherever we are. By this measure, the simple fact is that Gesloten Cirkel, wherever he's from, gets respect and admiration from the Midwest consistently—as evidenced by his decade-plus of being spun heavily at proper underground dance music events in the region.
Tracklist01. I Live In The Midwest
02. Everything For The Dev
03. A Better House
04. Brainy
05. You Should Post
06. J-Chant
07. Download
08. Balls