This week’s ROTW feature sees a turn to the darker, more experimental side of electronic music with weird, psychedelic techno from Stockholm’s Acronym.
Since 2014, Swedish label Northern Electronics has risen to prominence within underground techno scenes right across Europe and Russia; label figure Abdullah Rashim has even recently been booked to play in the US. Since in founding, the label has developed its own recognizable broody, atmospheric analogue sound which lies suited between dark hypnotic club settings and home listening. Think of sparse, wintery Scandinavian landscapes… now, have that picture converted into sound.
Acronym, like Rashim, remains another allusive Swedish producer creating shadowy drone techno within the isolated northern realms of Europe. Guadalquivir comes out as one of his weirdest, perhaps even more upbeat releases, and is focused more towards syncopated beats.
‘Purity’ is a twisted, high-energy track going full way with skipping rhythms: a whirl storm carrying any dancefloor into frenzied hypnosis. It’s branded with slippery sub-aquatic waves of reverbed synth cords. A subtly building high-octane drone attacks mid way through to add another entrancing layer, which takes the track to its peak. This is a track for trapping heads in the echo chamber. ‘Floating’ is another weirdo, mind twisting cut. This time layering broken up beats, over a crokey, fluctuating bassline. There’s not much progression, but it definitely stays as the most playful track on the EP. Play this out in the graveyard set to test how out-of-it your crowd is.
‘Constant Flow’ is the most dubbed out track. Again, more distorted acid squelches. With its rattling computed rhythms it recalls Acronym’s characteristic hypnotic style (like his ‘Red River Gum’ EP on NE). The EP finishes with ‘Cleansed in Fire’, an atmospheric ambient track to settle the mind from the disarray it’s so far led to… Light syncopated snares blended with emotional chords almost allow you to almost shed a tear, before it changes into a jittering rhythmic roller. Yet, in the cleansing fashion intended, time to breathe is given as the track closes.
3.8/5
Words by Fred