- The 2XLP reissue of the seminal early Sahko CD offers a timely reminder of precisely what minimal in techno means. The collections of dancing bleeps and kicks (and often no more) which make up 1993's Metri, one of the Finnish imprint's earliest releases, make even the most skeletal Perlon or Minus track seem like bursting house. However, while it is possible to trace many of the features of today's minimalism - sparse construction, simple repetition, interest in tiny fragments - back to these recordings, and while the music here is clearly working upon and around the patterns and vocabulary of dance music, producer Mika Vainio is following a different agenda.
As tracks like 'Twin Bleeps' demonstrate, the motivation seems to be on producing an aural equivalent to Op Art: a pair of tones, of differing pitch and out of sync, bounce around a regulated kick drum and across the stereo spectrum like a pair of Bridget Riley stripes. 'Kuvio' and 'Hornitus' pursue the same with additional elements, creating constantly shifting rhythms as patterns weave around the bass, an effective technique taken up on countless disorienting ketamine-style house productions (Michael Mayer's 'X' and Gabriel Ananda's 'Miracle Whop' being two examples). 'JLCSG' and 'Erit Samat' are nothing more than short (less than a minute) demonstration pieces involving competing risset tones: the former slowing them down until they become rhythmic, the latter breaking them into bits, finishing on extreme highs and lows.
Those tracks which adhere to dance music structures are still too empty and blunt to function as such. The hat, clap and bleeps on ‘Lasi’ are punched out in the simplest of arrangements, seeming more a ghostly pastiche of techno than the real thing: Donnacha Costello was evidently listening to this when he devised his colour series, streamlining and channelling them for club ears. 'Hion' uses freer drum patterns against sharp chinks, water droplets and ping-pong pops, like a Neanderthal Monolake. The final 'Radio', excerpted from a live performance, is all shifting, swelling mood: spectral voices cloaked in static drowning in waves of bass swell.
Considering its vintage, 'Metri' has aged well, and thirteen years on it still has few peers. Far closer in spirit to New York 1960s minimalism than much of what carries the name, either in the techno or the composition camps, it's exciting, occasionally irritating, and essential.