- Speaking to Infinitestatemachine late last year, Arne Weinberg—the Glasgow-based techno producer behind Diametric, AW-Recordings and the Echocord-signed Onmutu Mechanicks project—felt the need to set the record straight on one of dance music's big taboos: "...why is it wrong to keep up traditions and pay respect to the early sounds and the originators? Very often writers or reviewers think they need to tell everybody a record is not as good because it sounds dated to their ears. To me, that's utter bullshit." The man has a point. Why should music made in a certain tradition—according, as it were, to a certain "faith"—be frowned upon because of that? It's one thing to blindly repeat the past (something a lot of neo-Detroit producers are, however inadvertently, guilty of), quite another to lovingly mine it.
In doing the latter, Weinberg's music sounds anything but dated. On Chrome, all the influences are there, from Model 500 and Drexciya to Aphex Twin and Autechre, but what results never sounds like anything other than Arne Weinberg (which might not scream "THIS IS 2010!", but that's kind of the point). The title track, a sultry piece of midnight house somewhere between Redshape and Instra:mental, is worth the entry price alone, solemnly shifting in and out of focus as a muffled female voice allures and alarms in equal measure. The A2 and B2, meanwhile, tread substantially airier, ambient-leaning ground, drawing on classic Detroit and IDM textures—no surprises there—but landing up in a distinctly wistful, Weinbergian place inhabited by all manner of rhythmic quirks and melodic flourishes. Beguiling, fantastical and charming aren't words commonly associated with electronic club music, but here they most certainly apply.
The EPs big surprise is "Motive Force," which, rather than treading Weinberg's usual hoppity skippity 4/4 path, deploys a rolling proto-jungle breakbeat plucked straight out of the 'ardkore canon. Wedded to a delicate array of chiming keys, twinkling bleeps and nebulaic synth clouds, it works magically, partly because it conflates two formerly opposed schools of dance music, but mostly because, in doing so, it sounds genuinely fresh and touching, in a way which so much of today's "cutting edge," "forward thinking" dance floor gear—however perfectly produced and momentarily compelling—simply doesn't, nor ever will. It might not get the cool kids tweeting (or whatever it is the cool kids do these days), but quite frankly, that's their loss.
TracklistA1 Chrome
A2 Echoes & Whispers
B1 Motive Force
B2 Nights of Sanctity