ANCHORSONG/ INFINITE SCALE, Cellar, 12/3/16
In techno, it’s not so much the individual musical
elements that make a track work, but how they are layered and offset. Archetypal laptop huncher Infinite Scale
creates interlocking nets of classic drum machine rhythms, airy vox humana
wisps, pointillist digital plinks and spitting griddle hi-hats very
convincingly. However, this is friendly,
unassuming, well-worn music, rather than a synthesised new horizon, recalling
the cosy Detroit gestures of Warp’s Artificial
Intelligence series. Imagine The Black Dog has got old, and is now a
faithful pet, lounging by the fireside: it won’t never catch a rabbit, but that
doesn’t mean it should be put down just yet.
There is a breed of adept rock musician that spends a lot
of energy playing bad music very well.
We don’t want to hear another slowhand blues, slap bass breakdown or technical
shred if it sounds ugly and hackneyed, no matter how tricky the fingering. The original impression Anchorsong gives is
similar. Sure, he punching in drum
patterns and melodic motifs, his fingers an elegant blur above his MPC, as if
he’s stubbornly proving that producers can do things live, but who cares if the
music doesn’t deliver the dancefloor goods?
The opening number has a whiff of Burial’s misty glitchiness, but mostly
falls in with the chrome-plated high-end piffle of Bonobo, and we settle in to
be politely bored by the politely boring.
But, then, as the second track begins, Anchorsong’s natural flair for
groove come to the fore, as 80s Herbie Hancock Rhodes riffs slalom across the
sort of larded slinky boogie basslines French disco dons Voyage might have
unleashed. Like Mu-Ziq alter-ego Jake Slazenger without the smug grin,
Anchorsong continues to spin out taut grooves that extend from vintage Todd
Terry ravescapes to the well-heeled euphoria of a Shep Pettibone Madonna
remix. Like e e cummings pretending he’s
a Modernist firebrand simply by staying off the shift key, to call Anchorsong
original because of his live technique would be misleading, but his infectious tunes
are timeless where Infinite Scale’s are merely retro.
