Oberman Knocks - Dliankex

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  • Though his recording career didn't take off until the mid 2000s, Nigel Truswell's love affair with electronic music dates back much further. It shows in his output as Oberman Knocks, which, in its frosty digital abstraction, clearly looks to vintage IDM for cues. As if to cement the link, his releases on Andrea Parker's Aperture have been remixed by the likes of Plaid and Skam's Quinoline Yellow, and this new single comes backed with an epic 17-minute reworking by Autechre, who are clearly an inspiration for Truswell's intricate arrangements and oblique sense of groove. The original version of "Dliankex" is on the calmer side of Truswell's output, with only a muffled kick outlining the (unsteady) pulse beneath its mournful melodies and garbled midrange textures. There's a certain ponderous, swirling majesty to it, but Truswell struggles to achieve mix clarity, and the narrative arc is a tad predictable. Autechre, meanwhile, take no prisoners with their version. Where the recent L-Event EP thrived on space and textural depth, here we're plunged into hectic, hyper-compressed algo-rhythms from the off. What follows is a meticulous exercise in micro-groove management, sectional and exhausting, as if we're solving a succession of brow-furrowing maths problems. A sense of forward momentum only surfaces around the seven-minute mark, when reedy, accordion-like chords supply a slower undercurrent of movement. The effect is to render that rhythmic chaos suddenly ineffectual, like the angry chittering of an insect trapped in a jar.
  • Tracklist
      A Dilankex B Dilankex (Autechre Remix)
RA