Berlin’s Toobris kicks off the year with his Hayes debut, “Everzero”: a collection of funky, chunky beats focused on timing and call-and-response grooves.
Whether you want to admit it or not, one of the biggest changes in techno over the last year is something that often gets barely noticed. It’s something more or less felt within the beat. It seems there have been a few techno producers over the last year who realized that you don’t necessarily have to rely on the Roland style drum machine grids to create funky techno with interesting micro timing movements. You also might have to hand that off to Elektron and their unique sequencing, but also being able to nudge things off grid in the DAW is something that’s catching on. As a motif, Toobris has always had this minimalist funk and sense of groove, but it is certainly tightened up here to this thick rubbery push-pull that has not been seen anywhere else.
The track “Tomorrow is Gone” certainly highlights this really tight, bendy feel, as well as the following track “Chromatic,” where the high BPMs and the open space in the notes lend themselves well to expressing this hemmed-in, elastic rhythmic approach.
Additionally, what really carries this EP are the atmospheric choices, certainly heard on the tape hiss in “Everzero” and the lo-fi ducked grit of “Distant Ties.” If you also want to look at the tertiary focus of the tracks, it would be the call-and-response sequences that really keep the interest solid throughout. The really odd this-and-that sort of sound design of “Pleasure Void” is one example where your mind is pulled to explore these sonic curios placed in odd points overhead in the stereo field. Something which is also present within “Distant Ties,” but which is probably a bit more sensual in approach to the acknowledged lack of soul or deepness found in “Pleasure Void.”
These three concepts, the micro-timing grooves, the controlled and manipulated atmospheres, as well as some truly interesting call-and-response ideas, make this one of the most unique releases this week. This, coming from Toobris, who’s also released a vinyl with Key, it seems like the year is kicking off very well for one of the more stylistically unique minds in techno to date.
-Sean Ocean
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