Texture
These guys had me at cyberpunk grime obviously, but the quality continues to impress. Really feeling everything Tessier Ashpool have done so far.
Favorite track: Evolve.
Boomkat: "The title track comes off like an updated soundtrack for that club scene in Terminator whilst 'Triangulating' is pure Goldeneye Facility level techno business and 'Evolve' works out hard next to the likes of Egyptrixx. Label boss bot, Liar chimes in with a killer Optimix of 'Perfection' pumped with dynamic detail for the club."
LOUISAHHH!!!: "Uniquely delightful, full support for 'Perfection'."
Deke Soto: "Perfect release!"
Perc: "'Evolve' is great. Thanks."
Roska: "'Perfection' is a vibe!"
Sam Barker (Barker & Baumecker): "Nice."
Martin Dust (The Black Dog): "Great stuff, more of this please."
Arnaud Rebotini: "Perfect as usual."
After spearheading our very own “Cyber Grime Division” compilation earlier this year, Raul Vlădău, PKA MutualFriend, returns for his full-fledged debut on Tessier-Ashpool Recordings. Inspired by his (frankly worrisome) preoccupation with the advent of AR, bionics, and transhumanism, he’s devised an aural thesis on the urgency of these topics, in EP form.
Titled “Perfection”, it is by no means a self-pat-on-the-back, but a sincere ode to the betterment of the human condition through augmentation. On the surface, however, it might just be the perfect music of the now: spartan, percussive workouts, taking the best elements out of all recent developments in club music and distilling them into an almost oppressively effective reduction, perfectly befitting our oft-mentioned descriptors of “Machine Music” and “Avant-Club”. No bells, no whistles – just spatial economy and industrial-issue functionalism. A place for everything, and everything in its place.
The title track opens with pretty much the only real melody present on this EP – a tense, discordant three notes that manage to encapsulate the entire spirit of the EP in their portentous haunt, before almost literally exploding into pneumatic volleys of kicks and chilling echoes of the mission statement. Having already made the rounds on specialist radio and, most recently, Boiler Room, it’s already proven itself an invaluable asset in any forward-thinking DJ’s arsenal - moreso than we could ever elaborate upon in text form.
The star of the virtual B-side is “Triangulating”, Mutual Friend’s foray into Bristolian murk, seasoned with a generous dollop of heyday junglist histrionics and electro-futurism - at times hypnotic slog, at times invigorating jog. Closer “Evolve”, on the other hand, is an all-out onslaught of the senses – built atop the bare, dried, titanium-alloy-coated bones of a drum track, servomotor rhythms and cybernetic arpeggios intertwine to form an ever-escalating club tool.
For my Optimix™, I opted to incorporate elements of (and nods to) all the tracks on the EP, in what is otherwise a primarily original composition, meant to complement Raul’s concept. Full of hydraulic concretism, sample-&-hold splurging, vitreous sound-design, cheeky easter eggs, horizontal maximalism, vertical sparseness, and unclassifiable, demolishing rhythmics, it’s everything you might have come to expect from a Tessier-Ashpool Optimix™ (if you’ve been following us closely and have also been reading these).
Everything Principe releases is excellent, but this might be my favorite one yet (which is saying something). Bursting with energy and non-stop driving rhythms, this is a party from start to finish. J. Edward Keyes
A stellar cast of artists put their own shadowy spins on recent Bestial Mouths material—toward the goth club floor or into pure noise. Bandcamp New & Notable May 11, 2021