Blazej Malinowski unleashes the raw force of dark, dissociative, and hypnotic Techno on his first album in five years titled “Between Method and Madness.”
Carving out cavernous soundscapes through the hot, thick air in a warehouse full of ravers, “Between Method and Madness” lives up to its title, sounding like it was forged on a foreboding factory floor from razor-sharp saw waves, psychedelic pulsations, and controlled bursts of chaos.
The opening track “Particles” lures the listener into an uncomfortably welcoming sense of dystopian dread with the ominous droning tone and digital bleeps, resembling the sound of a massive machine slowly starting up in the background. Sprays of buzzing saw waves and the thundering thump of a kick drum act like a high-powered hydraulic press, building up and releasing sonic tension in sudden energetic waves. Delving deeper into the darkness on “Black Hole,” the dystopian drone, plodding percussion, and eerie melody pull us beyond the event horizon into a dimension of time-dilating delirium.
“Fear” picks up the pace, transporting us through a trippy and trance-inducing Techno wormhole, while the runaway roller “Train of Thought” whips us along like a locomotive growling along treacherous tracks. Continuing the physics theme on “Colliding Atoms,” Blazej plays with a sense of mass and space as a burly and brassy drone filters in and out behind a driving backbeat, and sparkles of percussive fills dance about the soundstage.
“Sequential Dust,” reminiscent of “Particles,” but with more momentum, features the cold crystalline tones of a scientific probe sent to smash into a comet on a collision course with Earth. Meanwhile “Madness” is a minimal Techno monster that flows simultaneously fast and slow, well-suited for building a set up or bringing it back down.
On the closing track, “Within A Dream,” swells of symphonic pads and choir voices slowly fade in with the steady throb of a kick drum with shakers spinning and panning around. Also featured is a massive synthetic brass section, polyrhythmic synth plucks, and a short rimshot fill echoing somewhere in the background. Despite some otherwise sinister sounds, “Within A Dream” concludes the album on a satisfyingly serene note.
Compared to Techno’s continuing need for speed in 2023, tempos throughout this new “Between Method and Madness” album are delightfully slow and sludgy. Each track, like some primordial synthetic lifeform, seems to flash, blink, breathe, or ooze, and the sound design is on-point to ensure satisfaction on subsequent listens. Artefacts’ mastering is masterful here and especially impressive. So is the vinyl pressing. Highly recommend giving this a listen. Bravo, Blazej Malinowski.
-Alex Dahm
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