- Stroboscopic Artefacts is associated with a certain kind of techno—loud, visceral and exactingly scientific—but label boss Lucy's debut album doesn't completely fit into that particular pigeonhole. Fittingly, the remix EP he's commissioned to precede it isn't your typical SA affair either: none of the producer's here have a prior association with the label and the remixes feel livelier than the usual pitch black material.
Tommy Four Seven's remix of "Tof" is an expectedly noisy thing, primitively carved from misshapen rock, its jagged edges landing with a disconcerting bounce like boulders tumbling down a cliff. It lacks the extreme noise of his recent productions, keeping the abrasiveness in check, but its brute force renders it the simplest remix here. Peter Van Hoesen goes for the jugular with his big-room remix of "LAV," loaded up with massive kicks, an elastic, grumbling bassline and ethereal pads that glow in and out of earshot. Truss focuses on stilted loops with his rework of "Eon," releasing energy by carefully unraveling tightly-wound bundles of arpeggiated synth.
British producer James Ruskin steals the release, however, with a stunning and clever take on "Bein" that stays closest to the album's spirit of stately IDM influence. Ruskin throws a complex and winding breakbeat out into a gaseous atmosphere, faint pads and synths conspiring around it in icy breezes. Ruskin's track travels through dimensions from prickly to austere to soft-footed, a journey that makes for one of the finest moments in techno in 2011 so far. Beelines for Working Bees shows that the usually perfunctory remix EP can be something more meaningful with just a bit of decent A&R, and that Stroboscopic Artefacts is not as single-minded as some critics have made it out to be.
Tracklist A1 Tof (Tommy Four Seven Remix)
A2 Bein (James Ruskin Remix)
B1 Lav (Peter Van Hoesen Remix)
B2 Eon (Truss Remix)