Given
the image of massed riot police on the cover, the album
title is best taken with a pinch of salt, just as seventh
track Urban Calm is anything but tranquil.
Pan/Tone is Canadian Sheldon Sidney LeRock, a name that
might have been perfectly appropriate for a career in
hip-hop. Pan/Tone’s output, however, is located
squarely in techno, a genre disposed to more technical
aliases. Newfound Urban Calm is a double CD
offering up twelve original compositions on its first
disc alongside ten remixes on the second.
Sans Adore, which opens the album, proceeds
at a brisk pace, bearing its carefully honed baggage
like a steadily advancing mechanical wave. A buzzing
whirr snakes around in the middle distance refusing
to be pinned down by clipped beats that pierce the foreground
like so many regimented arrows. As with its minimal
techno siblings, it’s the tiny exceptions to the
rhythmic rule that raise the temperature, pique the
interest. Foreground embellishments occur against a
busy backdrop and if the ear’s distracted by a
certain element for too long, there’s the potential
– not always fulfilled – that everything
else will have subtly changed in the meantime. Returning
to the music as a whole, the listener’s challenged
to recall what the changes consist of. Thus the music,
always passing, never pausing, becomes an exercise in
memory. What happened? Did anything happen? Can you
recall the beginning of the journey seven minutes ago?
If you rewind, what memory will remain of the passage
you left behind?
Techno’s a catholic network of affiliations, beginning
in disputed territories such as Kraftwerk
and Cybotron – Düsseldorf and Detroit, not
forgetting the dub minimalism of Berlin’s Chain
Reaction, the jazz tinges of Kirk
DeGiorgio, the glitch sophistication of Farben and
on and on. There are hints of many of these on Newfound
Urban Calm with the castanet-clicks of No Pecas
Por Favor, the cumulative hypnotism of Nil
Lights, the piledriver shuffle of Unexplained
Stains and the Beltram stabs of Radio Dispatch.
Pan/Tone ably supplies the necessary motive force for
the dance floor, conjuring images of a bass-bound sub-floor
mechanism pulsing irresistibly and remorselessly on.
The only reservations are that a little more subtlety
and a more discerning take on the textures would be
welcome. After 75 minutes and twelve tracks, a breather
is recommended before attempting the second CD of remixes
which cast an interesting and varied light on the originals.
Colin Buttimer
3/5 |
