- Cristian Vogel recently posted a letter to "the partyscene" on his blog. "I need to get away and explore new experiences," it says. "I wanna fulfil my dreams of being a serious composer and that means spending no more time in dark clubs with you and all my time in warm studios working on my music." This isn't exactly surprising: the Chilean-born, Denmark-based producer has made almost as much music for contemporary dance performances as he has for clubs, and his last album, Eselbrucke, was an avant-garde collage. From the very start, even his clubbiest releases, like 1994's Infra EP on Dave Clarke's Magnetic North, had a complexity that came from his time studying 20th century composition. Conversely though, his more experimental moments, such as 2007's The NeverEngine LP, had a rhythmic sensibility clearly informed by the dark clubs he now wants to leave.
On Polyphonic Beings, it's clear that Vogel still hasn't gotten the club completely out of his system. The opening track, "Exclusion Waves," is one of the grooviest things he's ever done. There's enough hiss in the sculpted sound design to evoke Basic Channel, but it's buoyed by a rhythm you could almost describe as jaunty. "McCaw's Ghost" follows the same dub techno path, as do the first minutes of "How Many Grapes Went Into That Wine?," until it goes absolutely apeshit. With hammering techno beats convulsing in a series of psychotic outbursts, this one ends with a wrenching noise that sounds like someone trying to keep it in a headlock.
Vogel's obsession with the physical qualities of sound come from the 1972 Stockhausen lecture that inspired the title Polyphonic Beings, in which the German composer talked about sound being able to change living things on a molecular level. That seems to be represented on "LA Banshee 109," which could be either the sound of the deep sea or the blood sloshing around your brain. It's music that mutates in your ear—"Lost In The Chase" sounds like deformed dubstep, and while "Forest Gifts" has a techno backbone, it's twisted out of shape.
It's only on "Society Of Hands" that Vogel closes the door on the club completely, presenting a delicate piano piece that ends in a howling vocal lament, which might be the sound Vogel's techno fanbase start making when they hear he's leaving them. His letter concludes with "Don't call me. I'm not coming back." If whatever he makes in the future is as good as this, we'll follow him wherever he wants to go.
Tracklist01. Exclusion Waves
02. McCaw's Ghost
03. How Many Grapes Went Into That Wine
04. Lost In The Chase
05. LA Banshee
06. Forest Gifts
07. Spectral Jack (Vinyl Exclusive)
08. Society Of Hands