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Stroboscopic Artefacts’ Monad series will continue with Berlin based Brit Tommy Four Seven at the helm for instalment number 13.
Tommy Four Seven steps up for Monad XIII
by Juno Plus on 31.07.2012 at 15:26pmTommy Four Seven – Primate review
by Juno Plus on 04.04.2011 at 14:29pmBerlin-based producer Tommy Four Seven has come a long, long way in the space of a few years. This writer first encountered his music on Brique Rouge when he was making acid-tinged house, but there is little trace of this approach on his debut album. Indeed, Primate sounds like Tommy has been weaned on a strict diet of Downwards, Einsturzende Neubauten and Autechre, with the result that while the overall mood is dark and unforgiving, the album is captivating. Like the ghoulish tendency of looking through closed hands during the climax of a horror film, Primate is an irresistibly gristly listen, one that draws the listener back repeatedly.
Tommy captures the Regis/Surgeon broken beat techno sound effortlessly on “Sevals” and “Talus”, with hammering off-beats underpinning walls of droning noise. A more direct approach to the dancefloor is audible both on “Track 5″, where a wall of hissing noise is set to a pounding rhythm track and, more indirectly on “Ratu”, where thick layers of sonic grunge gradually cede control to stomping beats. That’s not to suggest that Tommy is intent on bludgeoning the listener into submission – “G” is a death-paced, atmospheric track and “Verge” is served up in layers of ghostly ambience – but even less intense tracks like the murky broken beats of “Armed 3″, which sounds like an old DJ Funk record played at 33rpm, embody a mood so brutally primal that it’s impossible not to play them again and again and again.
Richard Brophy
Tommy Four Seven preps debut album
by Juno Plus on 20.01.2011 at 10:01am
Cavernous techno specialist Tommy Four Seven will release his debut album, entitled Primate, in March via Chris Liebing’s CLR imprint.
Traversable Wormhole – Single #4 review
by Juno Plus on 29.11.2010 at 17:20pmIt’s testament to the regard with which Adam X’s side project is held that it can attract the calibre of artists that have remixed Traversable Wormhole material to date. However, perhaps the most positive outcome from the hook-up with Chris Liebing’s label is that it gives a wider public the chance to hear the original tracks. Certainly, the Traversable Wormhole music on this release is essential listening. “Exotic Measures” manages to effortlessly combine the abstract and the real. Like the space motif the artist name references, the track features a black hole of abstract noise, given dancefloor appeal thanks to staccato percussion and drums. The end effect is like tapping on the window of a space station as a meteor shower approaches.
“Spacetime Symmetries” is more immediate and upfront, with Adam’s avalanche of dark sounds met head on by swathes of rippling sub-bass. Despite the fact that they are compelling piece in their own right, maybe they needed a more defined dancefloor sound, and on this front both Terence Fixmer and Tommy Four Seven’s respective takes on “Exotic Matter” and “Spacetime Symmetries” deliver. Fixmer’s remix owes a debt to Plastikman’s classic remix of System 7, its droning rhythm panning to infinity to beyond, while Tommy brings the package back to earth with splurging granite beats – but also makes a nod to TW’s ethereal leanings by finishing the remix with a few minutes’ worth of eerie, dead-paced ambience.
Richard Brophy
