Conrad Van Orton pushes up the intensity and doesn’t shy away from the higher BPMs and ripping syncopation on his latest offering for Dogma, “The Horror Vacui” EP.
Conrad Van Orton, sometimes known as CVO, is your producer’s favorite producer, not only because he has a wide variety of styles but also because he has excellent technique and a very precise ear as a mastering engineer.
This is special on this release, because Van Orton is present through every stage in the creation process, from pulling samples to making synth presets, constructing the patterns, and mixing and mastering. As such, this is a fully fledged vision from the mind of a techno master.
Maybe the central vision on the EP is an exploration of the syncopated push that’s all over this EP. That rhythmic floor and hectic feel set everything up to flow just like water from a fountain. It certainly levels up the intensity on “Tiber Null”; the kick and short recoil set up elements to quickly fall in line, almost too fast for you to react to. In that way, it’s also special because the feeling is so overwhelming. That base idea is mirrored in the clipped and distorted cymbals and the whistling tension synths. It’s all too much input at once, and you’re trying to cram that much understanding in milliseconds. Your mind just shuts down, and you go to a primal place where you’re just banging your head and putting up a fist.
Similarly, the title track, “Horror Vacui,” follows this line but somehow becomes even more intense with the high chords and horror show-styled suspensions. The track is just ripping along with the abrupt kick recoil, but it is punctuated by an off-beat bass. It’s a certified face melter that doesn’t let up.
On “Nightcrawler,” the thematic rhythmic push is still present, but it is enhanced with a bit more anticipation, resulting in a more nuanced expectation and release timing. With some of the elements chosen specifically for their frequency position in the mix, it feels like there is certainly something worming through the pattern.
We also see the syncopated pushing of a warbly arp over the crunchy kick and hat pattern, which seems to be a half-time-affected answer to the tubular synths that lay on top. The presence of affected 909s is something of a recent revisitation in his work, and their crunch here is indisputably powerful, as is the high-end intensity that they bring. What is something of a serious banging techno track is relieved by a cheeky break that gives you a hint that CVO’s beats are tough as nails, but that is not at all the case for him as a person.
Hats off to such a banging, powerful, and ripping techno release that pulls no punches and is certainly a unified, complete statement from an artist, musician, mixing engineer, and master of the craft. If you need a little bit of energy in your DJ mixes, this will surely wake ’em up.
-Sean Ocean
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