Apparat / Telefon Tel Aviv

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4...according to our Ant on Thu 04 Nov, 2010.

Mr Apparat serves up a DJ friendly 12" with an exclusive cut from his DJ Kicks mix. Dropped into the mix towards the near end of the set, the tune is evocative and uplifting butalso has a distinct sense of melancholy. Somewhere between mid and downtempo, it occupys that winding-down-for-the-night moment before one last burst of final raving before hometime. Once it gets going it becomes quite tranced out and sort of breaks down for a bit, plodding along until it shifts gear back into sweaty hugging-your-mates vibes. Sonically, things are kept fairly simple with an understated 4/4, choral vocal drones and a swirling synth that'll wrap you up and give you goose-bumps then kiss you and wrap you up in an arctic goose-down quilt. On the flip there are two tracks from the mix which didn't make it onto the double vinyl version; Telefon Tel Aviv's 'Lengthening Shadows' and Apparat's own Circles.

OVERVIEW:

Boasting collaborative work on albums with Ellen Alien and Modeselektor and three long players on the Shitkatapult label under the Apparat moniker, German producer Sasha Ring has excelled in always keeping his music fluid. Refusing to pin himself down to any specific traits, working completely in the realms of his own headspace he’s been able to explore new avenues whilst segueing his own passion for frequencies and sound design into his output.

Named after the Mexican town where Ring recently decamped to record forthcoming material, ‘Sayulita’ is his exclusive contribution to his DJ KiCKS mix; a 130bpm track that he admits contains the elements he was embracing at the time. Harnessing the shaky, organic percussion, big hoover like bass sounds and the erratic guitar chops that cut through the rising pads it blends somewhat brilliantly with Joy Orbison’s ‘The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow’ on the mix but also manages to stand up to repeated listens on its own; fully blossoming into a somewhat angular exercise in where Ring is at right now sonically - complete with curved reverb tails across the snare drums while the low end chomps at the bit behind it.

Alongside another Ring contribution, ‘Circles’ - which opens his DJ KiCKS installment with its blended string pickings dancing underneath his vocal line and wails of humanized chords – this EP also features a second track made expressly for the mix by Telefon Tel Aviv. Having travelled with Ring to Mexico to work on the new material and sessions that ‘Sayulita’ developed from, it’s suitably fitting that Joshua Eustis’ ‘Lengthening Shadows’ should be included.

Growing from an arpeggio that was lodged on a forgotten hard drive somewhere, the track was originally intended to be tailored to fit and blend with ‘Circles’ but took a new direction with a second draft, better suiting a calm section of the mix. Letting the subtlety and slow burning drum pattern unfurl is possibly ‘Lengthening Shadow’’s strongest aspect; alongside its vocal snatches, engulfing riff and deeply brooding bass parts, it’s the atmosphere and slightly unsettling mood of the thing that bares the bittersweet fruit.