Artist: Florian Meindl
Title: Accuphase EP
Label: Flash
Release Date: 27/05/2016
Genre: Techno
After recently turning in tasty remixes for the likes of house heavy hitters Dubspeeka and Ejeca, head honcho and respected German producer Florian Meindl appears here on his own Flash imprint.
First on the EP is ‘Accuphase’, a grin inducing slice of relentless techno, that invites you to cast off your shirt, bare your chest and launch yourself into a dark sweatbox of a club sometime during the mid-90’s. It’s the kind of pounding textured groove that Surgeon or Luke Slater would be proud of, just don’t go expecting an immersive home listening experience. Instead ‘Accuphase’ is a fist pumping slice of looping techno mayhem but that’s not to say that it’s not clever or intricate. A sense of experimentalism pervades the track, as layers of distortion build and modulate against a backdrop of pitch-shifted drums. Pure dirt.
Next is ‘Nubilous’ where Meindl experiments further, dropping the beats altogether in favour of a cathedral of reverb drenched sound. The track revolves around a simple analog refrain, repeating in a static haze of tape hiss and delay. ‘Euler Crystals’ marches us back down to the dance floor in fairly dramatic fashion. Jackin’ Chicago house handclaps punctuate the track, while the lead synth phases and bleeps it’s way into the back of your skull. Not for the faint-hearted this one.
Finally the appropriately titled ‘Wild Sequence’ takes us to the outer limits of dubby dense techno. Syncopated by an overdriven 808 bass kick, the track undulates along a dark and dissonant path before rumbling back down into the cave of fuzzy overdriven drums from which it emerged. A tribal drum workout that just keeps on going.
All the tracks here have the feeling of live jams and are as such, perhaps not as accessible as some of Meindl’s previous works. Nevertheless they positively seep analog goodness and don’t seem to strive for the finished over-processed perfection that afflicts many of today’s generic techno offerings. Meindl challenges us to open our ears and embrace his experimental approach. It may not be perfect but it is an intriguing and ultimately rewarding listen.
