Semantica, Arjun Vagale, and Oxygeno invite the dance floor to go swimming in a pool of liquid audio and drift away on their latest release, “Zeeman Effect.”
Before beginning, we need to issue some proper respect to the label for not trying to oversell the release by pushing stereotypical liner notes and merely publishing the description “N/A” to all the platforms. Secondly, an even better deal for the DJ or buyer is that the new release is cheaper than a release that’s been out for a year or more. When new releases are out, they usually go for the higher price off the bat, and then labels reprice them at a standard low selling price months later. The whole release is going for €4.90 EUR right now on Bandcamp and for a little bit more than a buck and a half per track on Beatport.
This kind of attitude is something we haven’t seen in some time and highlights a lovely disdain for conformity and profit that is suspiciously lacking in the techno music community. Of course, you can and should pay a little bit extra on Bandcamp; you do have that option. But the sentiment still stands. However, if we take this sentiment in hand, we find that it is merely bracketing for a well-made and mind-bending EP of proper techno music. Let’s dive in.
Since we’re not left with much artistic vision dripping in the liner notes, we’re left to look up the title “Zeeman Effect,” and with a simple Google search, we’re inundated with obtuse diagrams and concepts in physics you may not be fully aware of. And that sets the stage for an intriguing yet confusing look into the audio sphere present here. When we say intriguing yet confusing, it can be a direct presentation of what’s going on within the music. There’s an overarching theme in the music that’s hard to pin down, but it’s mostly the feeling of following pitches within the music with descending and ascending filtering as well as strange spatial dynamics that leads you to feel as though your brain is being sucked out of the side of your head.
This, of course, is all over the title track “Zeeman Effect”. And while you’re left pondering this, there’s all this sensory overload coming at you from the rest of the track that is dissonant and evolving, organized chaos.
We also experience this pitch-meets-filtering motion in “Zero Gravity” and “Translumina” as a tension-carrying effect in soupy and liquid-flowing pieces of music that are at times more difficult to comprehend than to listen to. In essence, you’re sitting in this grotto filled with liquid audio, letting it all wash over you. There’s some synth programming in here; if you’re looking close enough, and are bold enough to try and take in any detail, that is quite well made. For example, the bass pitch-meets-envelope sweeps to delay in “Zero Gravity” are quite lovely, and the evolving chords at the back seem to be modulated by feel rather than LFO. Everything in this track is super calm and low-key, but it has a searing intensity that is undeniably strong.
The tension chord carry is also noted on “Not All Humans,” but it also highlights another aspect of call-and-response ideas that you might have missed as a more subtle theme on the other tracks in the release. Again, the audio presents as a liquid and flowing form, but the overall intensity is a bit more toned down and makes for a great kick-off to the whole EP.
What’s great about this release is how head-y and cerebral it all is. It’s not as hard as gabber—maybe this techno is something more intellectually intense than that—and that’s something commendable. Any “average Joe” will listen to this music and be strongly bewildered. But to the real heads, this EP is a masterful look at how our brains listen to synthesis and deal with the response to psychoacoustics. In short, when we listen to this, we shut down and are immediately transported to an altered state. If we go back to your average Joe on the street, they would incorrectly accuse us of needing drugs to enjoy this music. We’d like to go further, correcting them, and saying, “It’s better than drugs; the music IS the drug.
-Sean Ocean
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