- Rrose's techno is a tangle of contradictions. It's some of the heaviest and meanest stuff going, but its components are light and agile. Its force comes not from its kinetic properties, but its density. And yet, there's a spacious aspect to the music, too. "Vellum" is a handy example of this. What at first sounds like the thrum of a blacksmith's workshop expands, thanks to growling pads, into a disorienting labyrinth of echo and reverb.
A lot more of For Aquantice finds the California-born artist using materials akin to super-light metal to apply an intangible pressure. "Signs," which recently featured on Function's Berghain 07 mix, is a dizzying spiral of rhythms and bleepy melodies that are squeezed more tightly together as the track progresses. Rrose eventually loosens the grip, and the song falls into gentle decay. "Levitate" is stripped of much of Rrose's ambiguity. After an intro of ambient swooshes and sonar noise, Rrose lets some hand percussion and loosened hi-hats fall over a more relaxed beat. But even as a warm-up track it gets the heart racing.
トラックリストA1 Levitate
A2 Vellum
B1 Signs