- The final track on Downliners Sekt's fourth EP features a vocal sample about how bass frequencies can heal the mind, followed by the return of an ear-splitting percussive pattern. There's something to be said for the disconcerting unease of "spooky" electronic music by the likes of Demdike Stare and Focus Group, but Montreal's Downliners Sekt take this aesthetic idea to a more mechanistic place, building tracks from hunks of industrial detritus and splinters of discarded steel, beats that sound like they could be composed of both factory machinery and the flinty click of malfunctioning lighters. The industrial symphony of "Dirty Meinz" suddenly sidelining itself in favour of a vocal breakdown is like some bizarro Disney movie where the machines come to life and playfully scare the shit out of unsuspecting people.
Their fourth release, Hello Lonely, Hold the Nation, is the first to be picked up by an outside label. But it's by no means a compromise. Beginning with near formlessness, "U Gumbu" sets forth a torturously deliberate beat that lurches over what sounds like a crackling fire pit. (They give us flames instead of basslines, but even those are maddeningly inconsistent.) Later, on "Inside Maverick's" it sounds like the flames overtook the hardware somewhere in between songs as blackened, hollowed-out beats sound off resignedly, carrying with them the intrinsic heat of the flames without any of that brilliant light that usually goes along with them. Indeed, this EP deals in various shades of darkness, starting with complete black and progressing until the final track wherein the elements finally come together to form something that sounds vaguely like a dubstep track. The assembly-line beats coalesce into something familiar, with streaks of light emerging in between the cracking facade like water trickling through imperceptibly fractured rock.
Tracklist 01. U Gumbu
02. Dirty Meinz
03. Inside Maverick's
04. Negative Green