Valerio Lo Presti, better known as LPV, continues to dip into proper techno territory with his latest release for Remco Beekwilder’s Emerald: the “Tachyon Pulse” EP.
It’s clear with this latest EP that LPV knows how to have a good time, blast an audience’s hair back, and blow up some bodies into oblivion.
For those who have never made a techno track, it’s supremely difficult to find an artistic balance between expression and artistry while having a deft sense of control and still retaining the real need to make the music fun to listen to and dance to. In some ways, if you don’t try to have some reserve and self-control as a techno musician, you’ll lose the plot and start to veer into kitsch, camp, and cheesy fluff. Getting a firm grip on yourself is the surest way for people to really start to take you seriously as an artist.
LPV proves here that proper Techno can be hard as nails, but also nuanced, mature, creative, and expressive. Which can make anyone happy, from the ravers to the techno purists alike. And that’s what we’re hearing all over this release.
There’s the deep sense of muted control on “Not Used with Care,” where nothing is in your face, but yet somehow simultaneously is. And the title track ”Tachyon Pulse,” where there is that hush present from the previous track, but there’s a running drone bassline that is ever so slightly ducked to create this clinical and tight groove that comes along at a very fast pace. It’s pretty damn sick, to be quite honest. Then there’s “A Day at the Sea,” where the gritty hard pumping pulse in the low end is softened beautifully with the lush chords, high singing sweeps, and frozen reverb tails. It’s really the balance of the intensity that LPV is very familiar with, pitting it against a very strong and passionate soundscape that makes for great contrast, balance, and tension. All of which makes for a superb techno track. On “Twisted Cables,” we are gifted with a very intense old school Jeff Mills aesthetic that also would not be out of touch with some of the grittier aspects of Bas Mooy’s Kazerne or a Claudio PRC DJ set, but goes hard into Psyk, Non Series label style dissociative hypnosis. Lastly, on “Run Run Run,” we’re greeted with some minor tech trance styled tricks, such as a pulsing offbeat bass and kick rolls, but the evolving ambient sound bed, as well as the very slightly modulated main elements, is the foundation upon which the track stands.
The release as it stands is killer and tough with broad appeal to techno purists and young techno heads alike. The real key to mass appeal: levels of understanding and artistic depth that is easy for the average punter to understand, but also has enough meat and vegetables for the people who decry the need for substance over fluff.
It is something that we’re thankful that LPV has demonstrated in full on this “Tachyon Pulse” EP. If his trajectory is what we’re hearing here, we may see more diversity and levels of intensity to the techno scene in total, and with scale, depth, and artistic range for a real test of techno muscle and mind.
-Sean Ocean
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