- It's rare for me to get evangelical about a record, to genuinely wonder whether someone has heard something and why haven't you heard it oh-my-God-you-have-to-hear-it and tell me what you think and…you don't like it?...well, I can understand that, but you're wrong, you know? But that's exactly what Oni Ayhun's new 12-inch did to me when I got about 90 seconds into the first listen. It's at that moment that a screech interrupts a perfectly normal—for Oni Ayhun, at least—groove. The beat continues unabated, as if nothing has happened, but I looked around my apartment when it happened. Had something fallen? And then there it was again. In time with the music. And then what sounded like trash cans being played like cymbals. And then unholy moaning, voices reaching up from the grave. And then, and then, and then. Each element more improbable in a techno setting than the last.
The B-side to OAR004 isn't nearly as phenomenal, but it isn't every day that you have to compare something to a credible mix of power noise and dance floor techno. Instead, Ayhun takes things in a more abstract direction, eschewing the hand-hold of a conventional rhythm for long stretches. As Ayhun's show last weekend at Berlin's Panorama Bar proved, he has no problem operating in the dance floor realm—provided he's allowed to dress up in an all-white Renaissance era outfit, paint his face and bald head a similar color and play what looked like a modified bass clarinet for sampling purposes. (You had to be there.) But he also feels just as at home pulling off long, moody pieces of noisy improvisation around a somewhat steady beat for the chin-strokers as well. Right now, he's among the most interesting in the world at both.
Tracklist A OAR004-A
B OAR004-B