Click Box - Shades

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  • In my own mind at least, the pursuit of a computer-based electronic musician should be an escape from the sequencer. In other words, to listen to a record and imagine a single vertical line traversing a series of coloured blocks on a screen is about as far from a flight to the "promised land" as it gets. Unfortunately, consuming Shades, the new five track EP effort from Berlin/São Paulo production duo Click Box, you can't help but feel that every conceivable sonic spec, from the smallest ambient pin drops, through to the overarching rhythmic grid, was the undisputable work of machines. Now while this might sound like a painfully contradictory statement to make in a scene of laptops and loops, are the best dance records not those that forcedly smash their way out of the digi-realm and touch you with something that feels at least a little bit "real"? "Berlin Shades" opens the proceedings and sets the dial tone. A plodding kick/bass interplay underpins a flimsy synth line you could unaffectionately describe as cheeky, before the mother of all moronic lead lines is unleashed. Things unfortunately get worse before they get better: "Lost Road" pits rudimentary percussion against an uncomfortably plucked lower-end, with a lingering cloud of pitch-bent synthesis having a similarly unsavoury affect such as its predecessor. "Some Toys" is characterized by a sort of minimal-meets-disco mood and makes for one of the EP's better efforts through its comparative slowness and lurch towards classic drum tones. "Voxer" however jerks back toward the dumb side by throwing its bassline down a ski-slope LFO ramp and spilling white noise pulses all over the carpet. If there was such a thing as the "M_nus Mosquito" preset, then the digital exclusive "Step Session" has it in abundance. 8-bit tones rub shoulders with heavy '80s toms, ending-up roughly where "Berlin Shades" kicked things off. It's hard to imagine this being anything but a club smash on the dance floors that still hold the late '00s use of the term "minimal" dear, but for anyone who desires a little more than ones and zeros, it might be best to look elsewhere.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Berlin Shades A2 Lost Road B1 Some Toys B2 Voxer Digital exclusive: Step Session
RA