Helena Hauff - Actio Reactio

  • Share
  • It's tempting to think that Helena Hauff is the product of a music journalist-baiting algorithm with its parameters set to "2013." Consider the evidence: as she explained in a recent interview, the Hamburg DJ-producer's formative musical experiences came not from trawling the blogosphere, but through cassette rips of CDs borrowed from the local library. Her all-vinyl DJ sets, as resident of Golden Pudel's Birds And Other Instruments night, span genres and decades, taking in pretty much all that is dark and righteous in electronic music. And her production work is carried out on an all-hardware setup, each track recorded to tape in a single take. In contrast to the broad stylistic palette of her DJ sets, Hauff's debut EP is fearsomely distilled. The brief minimal wave-style cut "Micro Manifesto" isn't all that thrilling. Elsewhere, though, rough-edged drum machine gymnastics are the order of the day. "Actio Reactio" features percussion and little else, while "Break Force" invites a rather sultry 303 line into the fold. Both are sparse in the extreme and, though rhythms may mutate, fall away and re-emerge, the effect is hypnotically repetitious. This is acid house boiled down to its meditative essence, and its dance floor efficacy is pretty indisputable.
  • Tracklist
      A Actio Reactio B1 Break Force B2 Micro Manifesto
RA