Madrid-based Orbe, aka Fernando Sanz, has been on some serious fire lately and really taken to his stride, presenting a set of intensely hypnotic heaters with “Binary Function” for the 9th installment of Psyk’s Non Series sub label, Nwhite.
Orbe’s bread and butter for his last few releases have been this deep and spacey hypnotic vibe, calling on his long-term love affair with deep ambient techno. For this latest “Binary Function” EP, it seems Orbe has been formatted slightly for Psyk, aka Manuel Anós’s penchant for more driving and straight hypnotic beats featured prominently in his curation of the Non Series label. Possibly with Orbe’s mix being closer up in your face and somehow his techno being even more heavily dissociative than normal, there are strong out-of-body experience vibes throughout each of the four tracks. Though that’s somewhat par for the course for the Non Series label, with each record trying to outdo the last at attempting to rip your soul from your body.
Orbe here is merely flexing his muscles within the format of this hypnotic techno theory and does it exceptionally well. “Prisma” creates an intense soundscape with layered polyrhythms. “Binary Function” echoes out a bass in a polymeter while synths pull at the corners of your eyes. “Arc” also continues onward with echoed polyrhythmic elements following the dynamics of a filtered pattern in an LFO. Though the real serious head-case track is “Repetitions” which seems like standard, heavily filtered, drum machine fare until, zang… at 2:46 a completely unrelated sample comes to destroy what you thought you already knew about everything. It sounds unintentional until repeated, “Where is that coming from!? Is that on another tab?” If DJing, it will certainly come out of left field if you’re not expecting it, but it’s amazing. Never heard anything like it.
Of course, artists have been making hypnotic techno since the days of Oliver Ho, Blueprint label, and all the Primate stuff… but never with this level of intensity or to the point that you don’t need anything else besides the music to dive in and swim around your brain for a bit. Maybe for some of the uninitiated into the techno world this could be intolerable or just noise, but for the techno aficionado, it’s as intense as op art, as conceptually complex as abstract art, and maybe even more cerebral than psytrance.
For Orbe and his strong background in deep ambient techno and presently with this hypnotic techno release “Binary Function”, everything’s coming together in a very big way. There’s so much more to be expected from Orbe, rest assured.
-Sean Ocean
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