Review Summary: Clicks & cuts: v. cute
This evening in techno: Pole is a dub-adjacent ambient techno/glitch musician from Berlin, and
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This evening in techno:
Pola is a dub-adjacent ambient techno/glitch musician from Tokyo! We like Pole - we like Pola! Let's all love Pola. From what I gather, Pola - specifically this fine record
Pola Meets Lyrica - landed on the right algorithms a suitable number of years (many) after the time of its release (2005) to make the grade as an archivist's cult classic. What does an archivist's dub-adjacent ambient techno/glitch cult classic sound like? Well, in this case, a gorgeous set of vintage, Ovaline clicks & cuts into a streamlined into compact song-shapes, akin to the makeover the likes of Vladislav Delay, Jan Jelinek and, uh, Pole had given the style in the years previous. Though it boasts a similar standard of production to those artists (get you a sniff of the way the glitch collage on the glacial highlight "Fatal" crystallises into a deceptively robust beat),
Pola Meets Lyrica innovates through the melodic sensibility it brings to relatively bitesize series of offerings for this sound. These tracks are sparse but rarely abstract, opening with a single concrete idea, whether a tactile glitch motif or an inviting chord progression, fleshing it out for as long as they can sustain. Pola has a keen knack for the succinct; succinct in this case means 'highly accessible' and 'expansive but very much not everlasting'. Speaking of w*rds, the term 'glitch motif' is a borderline oxymoron, but its pertinence here should tell you half you need to know about the album. Neat?
The remaining half is understated and best gleaned for oneself through a) close listening or b) the following disclaimer: the bass mix is too subtle to lead any given track, and the beats are as much a vehicle for mid-range melody and timbre as they are for rhythm. Get your headphones on and keep Pola off the dance floor. Credit where due, the closer "Vanite" lays down something close to a traditional banger and
almost goes there, but it's an incongruous note to end on and does limited justice to the qualities that see Pola brush against something magical. These are better heard on the aforementioned "Fatal", the fragile glitch-driven grooves of "Lievre" and "Pli", and the gorgeous ambient reverie "Strychnine" - though the rest of the album make for a uniformly gratifying space-out, you would do well to pay attention to these in particular. That is all the attention you need to pay; the majority of Pola's audience do not seem to pay any attention to the project's other works, for reasons that presumably start and end with their lack of tastefully drawn anime artwork. Are those other records good? Uhhh, hold my beer?
Tomorrow in techno:
・ the pros and cons of a lifetime on Aphex according to literal caged rats,
・Porter Robinson explains the arcade crane game for newcomers,
・Underworld on being the only band in the world still performing for a sexually active fanbase.
