- Two releases in, Bau already looks like an inspired source of dusky, leftfield techno. Run by OneTake, a Leipzig DJ with ties to Conne Island, the label first appeared last year with a reissue of Lynx's Call, an overlooked electro classic repackaged with an edit from Kassem Mosse. In December, it introduced an as-yet-unknown artist named Bokor with Rites Of Passage, an EP as artfully bleak as its sleeve design.
Rites Of Passage begins with its title track, a 14-minute sprawl that sounds like it could have been done on the fly with just a few machines. Throbbing away without a kick drum, the nervous loops trace a seemingly improvised path through a cold and dank imaginary space. It drifts unpredictably from an anxious opening section, through an unexpected tempo change ten minutes in and onto a subtly epic finale of arpeggios.
The other two tracks are more straightforward but have a similar kind of muted drama. "Hill Station" is a dub techno murmur with occasional licks of color—namely, bright chord changes that cut through the murk like sunlight in a dusty room. "Disintegration Dance" does something similar but with a syncopated kick beneath its shuddering chords. Like the other two, it's dark, dirty and elegantly subdued.
TracklistA1 Rites Of Passage
B1 Hill Station
B2 Disintegration Dance