- Speaking to RA's Conor McTernan recently, Lorenzo Senni described his Presto!? label as an act of "cultural cannibalism": "When I like [an artist] so much I have this feeling that I want to be like them." This EP shows how Detroit's DJ Stingray might have indirectly influenced Senni's music. Psyops For Dummies + Purge collects four tracks from a 2012 USB stick release along with two new productions. Just as Senni's music ditches drums for a celestial trance trip, these tracks de-emphasise Stingray's frenetic percussion in favour of grander emotional landscapes.
Don't get me wrong, the drums are still very much present. Stingray can probably make these beats in his sleep by now: skeletons of pinprick hi-hats, metallic snares and sci-fi bleeps and whirrs. But rhythm loops that at first seem energetic soon turn out to be static backdrops for more meditative synth work. (The exception that proves the rule is "Fullbodyscan," which flicks between a 160 BPM jackhammer and a weird, hip-hop-like halftime.) Sometimes the effect is blissful, as on "Disinformation," with its anaesthetised melodies, and "The Strategy Of Tension," whose chords glint like polished metal. Sometimes it's darker. "Hypoalgesia"'s lead lines form glowering clouds over a thrumming rhythm, and the pads on "Cognitive Load Theory" drift in like a freezing fog. And sometimes, as on the puzzling "The Sadist III," it's teasingly between the two.
TracklistA1 Disinformation
A2 Hypoalgesia
A3 The Sadist III
B1 The Strategy Of Tension
B2 Cognitive Load Theory
B3 Fullbodyscan