Lindsey Herbert continues her meteoric rise to the top of the charts with hypnotic and Dub-laced proper Techno off the Truncate label. “Not Alone” proves there’s no end in sight for one of the Techno world’s brightest young stars.
Lindsey is what you get when you have an entire local scene rallying behind you, and you work tirelessly on your music and invest heavily in putting every waking moment of your life into the music and the scene as a whole. Such is the case for a person truly dedicated to her studies in professional audio, mixing, and pushing herself hard to work on her club events in San Francisco with Direct To Earth in SF and parties with the Techno Snobs crew in Arizona. She’s already found a lot of success on the Nechto, Suara, and Blank Code labels in their compilations, but this solo release, “Not Alone” outing on Truncate really puts her foot in the door as an experienced musician with something to say.
And that’s a very literal idea as well, since Lindsey Herbert’s voice is very much a central part of this release. It’s rare in the Techno scene to feature your own voice so heavily in a track unless you are Matthew Dear or what have you. Most people tend to use a vocoder, another singer, or use pitch shifter such as fellow “From Our Minds” tour partner Richie Hawtin did to give power to his very young and reedy-sounding voice saying “Overdose” on his classic FUSE track “Substance Abuse;” which is what you may hear if you speed it up past +8 (pun intended) at 45rpm.
In Lindsey Herbert’s case, there’s a deeper fixation on the Dub aspect of her voice as a hypnotic guide through the title track “Note Alone” and also through “Getting Lost”. They are a welcome part of your mind as you listen to them, suggesting that she’s sitting with you and you’re not alone. Her music is like hypnotic, guided meditation therapy. Yet all the while, the voices are merely a hypnotic suggestion, and your mind fills in the blanks while this heavy kick and tight groove falls down around them.
The other two tracks, “Incoming Signal” and “Coming into Contact,” feel like investigations and studies of the classic and quintessential sounds of Techno. For example, “Coming into Contact” really sounds like something James Ruskin would produce if he was into a bit more of a darker flavored Techno. These two tracks are certainly the bold and heavy hitters on the EP with slamming grooves and disembodied top-end transition parts floating in the mix. Just quality peak-time cuts through and through.
All in all, this sound on “Not Alone” seems to be one of the definitions of proper Techno in this 2020’s era. She hasn’t gone full force into unrelenting slammers with no soul. Instead, Lindsey Herbert retains the true sensibility of what real Techno is, while pushing the envelope for herself and keeping the music banging hard.
-Sean Ocean
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