- Having grown up in the era in which Romania made the painful, bloody transition from the Ceaucescu regime to take its tentative place in the post-Cold War world, DJ and producer Radu Dumitru Bodiu, AKA Petre Inspirescu, has had to travel further than most to establish himself at the vanguard of minimal electronic music. In his early days, it was an arduous 24-hour trip to Prague or Budapest to seek out new records. "Time stretches and opens the horizon," he says of life in a small Romanian town, and that sense of traversing vast distances both historically and geographically permeates fabric 68. Like Ricardo Villalobos, an early inspiration, Inspirescu has looked for ways to bring together the supposedly distant worlds of academic music and 4/4 beats.
With fabric 68, Inspirescu has put together a selection of hitherto unreleased tracks which would otherwise have found their way onto his Yojik Concon imprint. They're stitched together by a brisk, tightly-knit beat that slowly and subtly intensifies as the album progresses. On "Lumiere," a gentle, candle-like glow gives way to the glass-blown shapes that arise naturally from "Chestii Socoteli," followed by the clipped, martial chant of "In Miriste." That's replaced by the enigmatic drone of "Anima," before on "Chosen," the vistas suddenly open, heralded by the faraway wash of a gong.
By "FH Dub," the very fabric of the beat has shifted from woodblock to synthetic, niggled by a gnawing bassline, coexisting with the sombre phrases of a woodwind section. On "Vastu' Da Gama," Inspirescu seems to have struck on an interlocking and quite natural accommodation between chamber music and techno: over what might sound to the superficial listener like an hour-long repetition of a single beat phrase, a great journey has been undertaken. On the closing "Piano Preludes" the beat finally disperses, pattering and scurrying away, as Inspirescu reassumes his original guise of Bodiu Radu Dumitru, sketching out some tentative pieces on the ivories.
Tracklist 01. Petre Inspirescu - Lumiere
02. Petre Inspirescu - Chestii Socoteli
03. Petre Inspirescu - In Miriste
04. Petre Inspirescu - La Cuba
05. Petre Inspirescu - Anima
06. Petre Inspirescu - Chosen
07. Petre Inspirescu - Seara-n Crang
08. Petre Inspirescu - FH Dub
09. Petre Inspirescu - Flurimba (Yojik ConCon)
10. Petre Inspirescu - Basso Ostinato
11. Petre Inspirescu - Vastu' Da Gama
12. Petre Inspirescu - Dansul Libelulei
13. Petre Inspirescu - Je T'aime Lori
14. Petre Inspirescu - Murgul
15. Bodiu Radu Dumitru - Piano Preludes