Review: Having previously released music from the likes of Bristol's Ekoplekz, British electronic music pioneer F.C. Judd and Brooklyn's ADR, Public Information continue their survey of the outer fringes of avant-garde electronics by shifting their focus to USA's West Coast, presenting the debut record from Austin Cesear. Even in terms of America's rich underground of contemporary producers Cesear seems like an outsider; where his contemporaries are content to rework well worn tropes into bright retro pastiche, Cesear's music is warped and decayed, existing in a dark, parallel version of Chicago and Detroit's musical past. Cruise Forever is an album of two halves, combining dense techno in the vein of Actress or Andy Stott and digital, tape looped ambient that is somewhere between Daniel Lopatin, Fennesz and Steve Reich. Far from being a pretender however, Cesear puts his own bold stamp on these influences, reconstructing them with his own rusty building blocks and delivering an album that is one of best debuts we've heard this year.
Review: After their mysterious little deviation last year, the hotly tipped Acteurs return to London's Public Information with another sublime amalgamation of minimalist industrial music in what feels like a cross between an EP and a mini LP, where each track fits in perfectly next to its counterpart. "Pride Of Classes" opens things up with a moody arrangement of harmonics and an even moodier male voice, and "Ewe" continues this desolate conversation amid what sound like the peak of the Blitzkrieg. "Honey Bear" goes down a post-punk path thanks to its repetitive and minimalistic synth lead, whereas "River Card" is another piece of experimental, neo-technoid poetry; "I W I" continues this tradition with an even nuttier collection of sonics at the helm.
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