Hayden F’s Silencio Records curates a powerful VA compilation that hits heavy and cannot be silenced or slept on.
That’s the strategy, right? You’ve got a mass of talent as an artist, promoter, and label head, as Hayden F has, but it’s buried by the sheer weight of the number of people releasing every week. Your choice is to either slug it out over the years, hoping that your talent will get you noticed, a known label picks you up, a known DJ starts caning the hell out of your music specifically, or you get in by association with a VA or remix. Some of the latter instances can be dangerous as it implies you bought your way in. But in other cases, it can also prove to be a showcase of your ability to toe the line as an AR for your label. While it certainly doesn’t hurt that there are some more well-known heavy hitters, there’s some real original funk and grit to the releases as well as some slamming grooves on here that cannot be ignored, or even found elsewhere…
A big key to the boldness and unique attitude of this release is the track by Pushmann, “Red Lights Are For Tepanyaki.” Most ‘broken techno’ can come off sort of insincere, as if to say, “huh, let’s try this broken thing out.” With this track, Pushmann is certainly sincere about the composition, and the broken techno is not the entire statement; it’s merely a delivery method for a truly funky and hypnotic statement, and it is completely ill. Chock-full of grit and nuanced facets on each sound, it’s a complete world. As mentioned by Hayden F, his own philosophy is that every track should be its own little world. That certainly tracks here for this one by Pushmann.
Another stand-out would be the Exos track, “Pink Panthera,” where Exos’ signature bass energy is a teeth-gnashing journey into the center of your skull. And the rubbery sound FX acts like a lobotomy probing around your frontal cortex. It is a real experimental track in some regards, as Exos is often keen to do, but it’s specifically designed to blow your hair and eyelids back completely (which is entirely to be expected from Exos).
One more big and sonically massive addition to the comp is Flug’s “I Don’t Know,” where the massive sub of the kick floats the material above as if it’s thick chocolate pudding. Hypnotic visitations of elements are filtered in and out. Presented as gifts, then traded out. ‘Yes, we’ll take that as well. One more of those, please.’
We rarely review a VA, and when we do, it’s generally something unavoidably lit and something that needs attention. Generally speaking, and as previously stated, they can be used as a method for attention-grabbing via association.
What Silencio and Hayden F have done has attempted to establish the idea that it’s not who’s on the release; it’s the ear that has put it together. Hayden F’s ear for the release is certainly well-developed musically and especially keen for proper techno that doesn’t hold back. Further, that ear is deep within these tracks, on a level few other people are listening in on.
-Sean Ocean
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