PREMIERE: Notzing - Triode [Alpenglühen]
Yesterday’s premiere took us to Valencia; today we are taking Autovía del Este and moving to Madrid, home of Alpenglühen, a label we've followed closely for years - and for good reason. The project, led by Alfonso Pomeda, has developed a very particular identity around the deeper end of techno, dub, drum & bass, and all the strange territory in between where you can’t or simply shouldn’t put a label on it. The music is consistently deep and murky, the artwork instantly recognizable. A match made in heaven, if you will, for the upcoming record, Vermiström EP, from a fellow Madrid-based artist, whom we featured at the beginning of the summer season with an exceptional live set - Dario Garcia aka Notzing.
The A side takes us into aforementioned dark and murky halftime territory. Opusdome and Peristrom linger in that grey area where morphing sequences and restrained, syncopated kick drums create a strange sense of movement. We've been calling this particular flavor of music “seaweed techno”, mostly because of the way the rhythms make you sway rather than dance. The B side stays in similar waters, but with a little more light coming through. Instead of halftime broken rhythms, Notzing pushes the BPM into the low 100s, another wonderfully flexible area where there's plenty of room to decide what rhythm can actually do. Vermis brings the deep low end, paired with a surprisingly light midrange. But for me, today's premiere, Triode, steals the show.
Triode is arguably the calmest track on the EP, yet quite versatile. Its hypnotic midrange, liquid synth sequences, dubby pads, and broken, rumbling low end sit together with remarkable ease. It could work just as naturally in an ambient dubby set as it could opening a proper techno session, and it makes just as much sense on headphones as it does through a sound system.
That balance is difficult to get right. Vermiström is another example of Notzing finding a way to keep the music deep and functional while leaving enough room for things to feel unexpected and fresh.
Vermiström EP will be available as a vinyl-only release at your favorite record store on August 31.