- Coming into his tenth year, San Franciscan DJ and producer Seth Horvitz shows neither signs of slowing down or running out of ideas. His latest and third Sutekh 12” on Soul Jazz’s Microsolutions to Megaproblems electronica imprint comes hard on the back of his monumental remix set on Leaf, a retrospective mix CD of his own Context label and even a soundtrack for locally produced black and white film ‘Pathogen’. And as always, you never know quite whether to expect glitch soundscapes, house or Underground Resistance inflected harder tracks. ‘Notes from Doctor Island’ combines a bit of everything with the correct doses of Saturday night urgency, home listening and Horvitz’s sculptural talents. The key, however, is ‘rhythm and not algorhythm,’ as Sutekh so rightly puts it. In this sense, the A-side ‘Kill the Monkey’ easily escapes the unnecessary complications of IDM, despite the fact that buried beneath the venomous pop acid exterior you can hear a computer destroying itself under the strain and heat of an anxious data overload. Yet there is far too much propulsion and dark, sentient energy in the woven dub textures, airy blips and lost voices to let the logical machine rule as it might in other hands. ‘The Diamond House’ on the other side is lighter, but cut from the same cloth. Immediately catchy, it pierces the scratchy glitch polyrythms with a light whirl of shining melodies. More late night than dance floor, but equally intriguing. A short EP overall, but both sides are as hard to resist as they are to pin down. Even after ten years, Sutekh continues to compel while still managing to cross uneven terrain.
Tracklist1 Kill The Monkey
2 The Diamond House