Mor Elian - Move Like Atoms

  • Inventive techno that deconstructs familiar rhythms.
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  • Mor Elian makes finely tuned techno and electro that reflects the dance music zeitgeist, and there's something unusually alluring about how she does it. Take the way she uses breaks on her latest EP, Move Like Atoms, which slips and slides in tight patterns. At a time when it feels like every house and techno producer is reaching for vintage Amen or Think breaks, Elian finds a way to reshape one of dance music's most recognizable sounds into steely techno that doesn't feel remotely retro. "Dossgroove" and "Move Like Atoms" chop breaks up into bite-size pieces that render them almost unrecognizable. Instead of making straight-up breakbeat workouts, she's crafts percolating techno with a metallic bent. Both are nearly tuneless outside of the occasional flash of melody, so the genius lies in how Elian keeps the breaks dynamic. She paints in broader strokes on the similarly peppy "Agora," where the breaks are looser and emotive chords are applied like smudged watercolours. But Elian is most exciting at her most technical, and "Russian Wave Group" is thrillingly weird. At first, the twangy bass notes sound like something from minimal techno's golden era, but they soon reveal themselves to be splinters of slowed-down breaks, occasionally snapping together into discrete drumbeats before disintegrating again. It's a startling sleight of hand that shows Elian's inventiveness.
  • Tracklist
      A1 DossGroove A2 Move Like Atoms B1 Russian Wave Group B2 Agora
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