Twelve months compiled into just twenty albums. From the thousands of records released each year, it is difficult to get even a handful on the site, and even more difficult to decide which ones were the best of the lot. This is however the twenty albums that have marked 2009 for themilkfactory.

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SND
Atavism
R-N 107
Raster-Noton 2009
16 Tracks. 62mins10secs

SND | Raster-Noton
Buy: CD | MP3 | iTunes

Citing a dictionary definition is perhaps the most clichéd way to begin any kind of persuasive piece, but here I am and all I can think of are the reasons why SND have titled this record Atavism. So, here it goes: atavism: the reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some remote ancestor that have been absent in intervening generations.

Keeping in mind that such a title suggests a musical continuum, it’s initially puzzling to hear that this music is as polished and, there being no better descriptor, sanitary as it comes. There’s minimalism, and then there’s minimal techno/microhouse – frequently breaking its own rules for blasts of funk – and then there’s this, the Lysol-coated showroom countertop. By comparison, Monolake sounds like big band jazz. It’s not just that tracks repeat the same themes with small, gradually unfolding variation, nor that that any ostensibly tonal material tends to hit only at the same time as a percussive counterpart. Atavism retreats even further into its own system by using the same general palette of strictly-digital sounds across the entire record. Continue Reading »