Review Summary: Yesterday you said tomorrow? Dance tonight! Revolution TODAY? LOIDIS CARPIT DIEM.
One Day is the dub-infused liminal dance odyssey this year has been waiting for, and we must now give Loidis (aka techno veteran Huerco S.) many pats on the back for shifting from the most promising ambassador of one genre (microhouse) to that of another (dub techno). Throw some hands! Now lean in with me to scrutinise this thing in all its tactile glory and understated complexity: it rearranges its central influences repeatedly and craftily, cements its appeal further and further across prolonged exposure, yet makes absolutely zero pretence of being for everyone. Just as Loidis' 2018 EP
A Parade… was uncompromising in the proportions and pacing of its cryptic developments, but incredibly generous to those who took it on its own terms (those of steady intrigue, churning over robust central ideas with all the patience and depth of a wholesale meditation), so too is this record firm in its demands but endlessly forthcoming when it comes delivering on their promise. Said demands entail the following: you must actively, earnestly like dub techno to the point that you admire its shimmery dub trappings even when there is no techno, be adept at riding dancefloor grooves even when there is no dancefloor, and be able to fingerpoint the real estate for both your comfort zone
and your nightlife escapades way off in a plot of netherspace. Nod even a begrudging affirmative to any of those, and we're off.
In layman's terms, the aesthetics of this album's commit so hard to the dub palette in all its aqueous, delay-addled pangs and ripples that you'll likely take a while to notice that the low end of is largely speaking a different language to the soundscapes — the basslines here are particularly clubby, driving rather than coasting throughout the early tracks in particular (to my ears, the first bassline fully intent on a dub groove arrives almost exactly halfway through the album on the instant highlight "Sugar Snot"). This is just part of a broader mercurial quality in the rhythm section, which sees Loidis adjust his footing from song to song in his alternation between techno stompers ("Tequa"), microhouse shuffle ("Sugar Snot") and fluid interplay between the two ("Love's Lineaments"). These seemingly linear songs ride a deceptively dynamic pulse as such, but there's nothing gaudy or overstated about Loidis' approach to finding a fresh groove for each track: although he calls on simple melodic goodness to get the crowd on-side early ("Wait & See"), he's savvy enough never to posit this as the central attraction. This album is every inch a beat trip cast out into liminal dubspace, and if you've got your claws around a valid passport — well…
