DEPTH AFFECT
Mesquin Eye
MOULINETTE001/MOULIN003
DL
Autres Directions 2004 

‘Our way of proceeding isn’t original’, claims the press release for Depth Affect’s Mesquin Eye EP for French web label Autres Directions in Music. What would happen if all electronic musicians were to work with such a brazenly honesty proviso? Might one be able to enjoy things on their own terms a little more? Or is this music forever to be framed within the context of innovation, progress, ‘newness’? Some of the finest rock music, whilst obviously containing its share of unique qualities, makes a virtue of derivativeness; will we ever truly be able to say this about electronic music, or has a circular, repetitive rut now been forged, never to be broken, forever to be recycled, until in fifteen years time we have ‘retro-glitch’, a desperate, market-driven travesty of what should be an innately fluid, explorative medium?
Back to Depth Affect. Having immediately flagged themselves as conscious non-pioneers, they prove to make a decent fist of crunching, moody electro-hop on the opening title track. Shame the remaining three tracks don’t quite follow up the initial promise, with Not Forgotten showing a less than desirable affinity with the sketchier moments of those St Petersburg romantic synth revivalists EU. Eugh.

KILIAN
Lappi Inzoo
TOY17
CD
Toytronic 2004

Matt Wand’s live multiple Gameboy excursions have been a rare technologically regressive treat in recent times, and newly signed Finnish Toytron Kylian follows a similar no-bit path on his debut EP Lappi Inzoo, plonking primitive but plaintive Tetris-esque melodies atop 1991 synth tones and beats which start off jacking Miami stylee, before splintering and squirting violently beyond recognition. A nifty trick, but one that spreads like budget butter across four tracks, particularly as the third is just a longer, crankier version of the first.

MANYFINGERS
Manyfingers
MOTEER002
12" / CD
Moteer 2004

Special mention this month for Manyfingers, the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Chris Coles, whose 7 track mini-album has just been released by Moteer, the imprint set up by Remote Viewer. This eponymous suite evokes elements of Matt Elliott (whom Coles played for on his stunning The Mess We Made last year), and a tinge of Four Tet, but is cast in its own unique light once one learns that the Manyfingers sound is actually made with almost exclusively with a single pair of hands, from short, simple live loops of guitar, piano, melodica and even the rhythmic slapping of thighs. Not only has Coles crafted a minimalist masterwork of quiet, gently gathering beauty, he also presents a necessary live experience, which, amidst endless chatter about the naturalisation of electronic music in the live arena, presents a genuinely engaging relationship between process and performance, coaxing a sound which one hears, and actually sees developing steadily, sinew by sinew, with a sublime, understated élan. Innovative, progressive, new…. and as organic as it is electronic. A lesson to be learned by others, perhaps.

John Stevens