- Paul Purgas of Emptyset kicks his low-key We Can Elude Control imprint back into gear with this release from Peder Mannerfelt, one-half of Swedish synth drone duo Roll The Dice. Broadly speaking, the label offers established names a chance to explore the common ground between electronic music and experimental multimedia practice; previous WCEC releases have come from the likes of Karl O'Connor and Mick Harris, AKA Regis and Scorn, and Lichens' Robert Lowe. Mannerfelt takes up the baton with verve, offering four explorations of the capabilities of modular synthesis that coolly walk the tightrope between stern and playful.
These tracks are built from synthetic bleeps and clicks and little else; our protagonist is the machine, and the drama comes from it being placed under duress. If you find Mannerfelt's main project unappealing in its relentless portentousness then Come Closer may be more your thing: a more scientific proposition, but also at points a supremely visceral one. The finest moments have a claustrophobic aggression not dissimilar from Emptyset—see the tortured shrieks of feedback in "Arss" or "Flem Flam"'s periodic eardrum-scraping bursts of high-end. But these tracks feel more exploratory, clearly the product of astute improvisation rather than surgically precise composition; a fact which lends them their appealing character, even if it can make for laborious pacing at points. The lengthy "Kommen Sie Doch Näher" is a highlight, and also the most overtly indebted to kosmische traditions—that pulsating minimalism derived from patchbay trickery and microscopic synth dial tweaks—but Mannerfelt succeeds in making the sound his own.
TracklistA1 Arss
A2 Untitled 3 (Edit)
B1 Kommen Sie Doch Naher
B2 Flem/Flam