- S Olbricht isn't the first Budapester to appear on Lobster Theremin, having been pipped to the post by Imre Kiss back in July. Like his cohort, Olbricht sometimes drifts way off the dance floor: releases for Opal Tapes and others have been murky and forbidding. But, as with Kiss before him, the Farbwechsel boss offers some of his friendlier productions for the London label. Which isn't to say A Place Called Ballacid is perky. The defining quality of these productions is their heaviness, the layers of compression, tape distortion and hiss dragging down the grooves, much like the irresistible weight that bears down on tired eyelids. It's a convincing aesthetic, but only when backed up by strong ideas.
"Veuns" and "RPSTS" are both pleasant but faintly unsatisfying; the latter, at least, takes Olbricht's denaturing strategy one step further, applying it to the stumbling rhythms as well as the sounds. The EP's best moments come when that weight is resisted to some degree, as in "IlX1," whose crisp percussion and depth-charge bass will get the head nodding, even if a ten-ton compressor causes the volume levels to duck and dive all over the place. Better is opener "Fi," where drugged chords just can't keep the track's itchy groove down. It gets more densely funky as it progresses, until eventually the chords give up altogether and slope off. Just as we're hitting sweat-soaked basement levels of intensity, we're dumped into a slow motion coda. Sometimes, it seems, Olbricht is his own worst enemy.
TracklistA1 Fi
A2 Veuns
B1 RPSTS
B2 IIX1