Arkane delivers a blisteringly fast set of grooving rippers off Melbourne Australia’s Warg Label with his latest “Warped Dystopia” release.
Manchester-based Arkane has kept a low profile in the past, which is curiously absent on Discogs but has surfaced on Suara as well as the California label Crisis of Man as headed up by Selective Response. Each release has a bread-and-butter sound of fast driving and heavy grooving cuts that come at you with a clean machinelike precision throughout.
In a way, that’s the real hat trick; any proper techno is just going to sound impossibly technical and articulated by a machine, since no human is capable of making those movements for an extended period. As a listener, you have difficulty processing every nuance, so most of the participation is involved in experiencing the wash of sounds coming at you.
On top of this, however, there are very human elements to contrast this mechanical precision. The long chords in “Gang” add to the conceptual wash of elements, adding a lilting heartfelt sense of expression to the rhythms. Giving a soul-stirring quality to the music is a true representation of a nod to Detroit’s ‘machine soul.’ Similarly in “Touch Me,” there’s a strong entactogen feel to the synths and vocal samples. The smoothness in the quietly subdued roar of the bassline is counteracted by the human elements gliding and blending in with the aerial view of the elements just below.
Conversely, both “Make Me Want” and “32 Filters” deal with somewhat chaotic and twisting lead lines that are more or less direct contrasts to the beat rather than moving alongside everything fluidly, with “Make Me Want” emphasizing the gently overdriven feel and syncopation of the bottom loop as the center of power on this track.
There’s a lot of simplicity and focus on what works here, and many things do work really well on this release. There’s a personal approach and connection of the artist to the audience, and several well-thought-out ideas of musical exploration.
Of course, there’s just the clean and heavy fast undeniably infectious groove that anyone can get behind. Arkane presents here a release that is just solid slamming techno all around, which is a sure-shot set of beats to make just about anyone get down.
-Sean Ocean
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