- Drumless techno, dubby grooves, acid daydreams? It's another excellent Acting Press release.
- "fig. 001," the lead track from PLO Man's latest EP, Anonymousmaterial, starts in medias res, as pulsing subs and offbeat snares kick it off mid-loop. Rather than the disorienting feeling of being thrown into a story halfway through, "fig. 001" feels like rejoining a conversation with old friends. The track unfolds with the familiar crossfire of a short-circuiting 303 eventually offset by soft, dreamy chords. It's everything that PLO Man does well. The gaseous rhythms of '90s IDM and ambient techno fold into acrobatic melodies to create a dubby fray of outré club delight. Anonymousmaterial, his first solo record in over half a decade, is a welcome reminder of how his label Acting Press has achieved its beloved cult status.
With its club-friendly rhythm, "fig. 001" is the record's DJ pick (perfecting a formula PLO Man laid down on Powerline), but the EP's best track is the A2. "fig. 015" is a warped dub techno loop (without any drums) that throbs with seismic pulses as symphonic melodies take shape within the swampy morass. As the motif repeats, the track becomes so lopsided it reminds me of watching a warped record move the needle up and down with each rotation. The B-side is also great: the brushed snare patterns and chittering synths on "fig. 003" make it ten minutes of '90s chillout room bliss (a continuation of 2021's Public Static V. collaboration with C3D-E) and "fig. 002" is full of the contrasting synthesizer lines that artists like JakoJako and Barker have turned into a new form of contemporary techno free of kicks.
Anonymousmaterial is, like so much of the Acting Press catalog, a sound and an aesthetic entirely its own. Anyone afraid that music fandom is diminishing in the era of TikTok should spend an hour scrolling through the label's Discogs page. It's testimony to how much love (and other emotions) a label can conjure: there's everything from diehards comparing the artists to Autechere and GAS to the hardware nerds theorizing what temperature the records have been pressed at. But even the haters who think the records are "vastly overrated" can't help but hit that four star button. It's refreshing that there are still corners of the underground that command such a level of fanaticism, even if AP fans aren't likely to have a seismic impact quite like Swifties.
Tracklist01. fig. 001
02. fig. 015
03. fig. 002
04. fig. 003