An On Bast – Coherent Excitations

Modularfield

Hot on the heels of the recent Panic Girl Cake On Jupiter LP, Wrocław-based An On Bast arrives with Modularfield‘s next instalment in their excursion into modern electronica. However, where the Panic Girl record hinted at home comforts on a distant shore, Anna Suda‘s Coherent Excitations is a meditative, yet dance-inflected body with a sense of mystery and travel at its core.

Opener “Collective”, with its muffled repetition and metallic, industrial beats, feels agitated with scuffed sounds rubbing up against the incessant hiss. The keyboard sounds are smeared, dancing and bobbing in the watery atmosphere. It becomes more strident, as if it takes some time to assert control; but there is a sense of adventure here, as if discovering new directions is the key to the whole album. It feels progressive, striding away from a homogenised future, slowing to a sub-techno beat and emerging into the excitable delight of “Vibrations”.

The background shimmers in the brightness and the shifting drone is accompanied by movements unseen; things sensed in dense scrub. There is a sense of kinesis across the whole album, with bouncing techno appearing at intervals to inject some frivolity and to circumvent the nervous textures that sneak up on you. It is stripped down, but in a way that can show us what it is that makes us move.

Side two starts in a more offhand and disinterested manner, the scattered sounds of “Processes” roaming across the hovering tones. The rise and fall of the tones attempts to penetrate this apparent vacuum. A cello, synthesised to remove its heart, is the accompaniment and is a little unsettling in the same way that the drunken, just off-key vibes of “Through” play with your preconceptions. It slips and slides through dusty, cobbled streets on uneven clogs, but the off-kilter tone evokes figures leering from the shadows, hiding behind doors, awaiting your eventual downfall.

The tracks move seamlessly and there is a touch of a heartbeat in “Energetic” to strip out the randomness, but it is replaced by sawing and cutting sounds that are even more edge-inducing. Subtle and stripped back, the slurred drones stretch and pull at your ears, reaching for the hypnotic vacuum of space. The wild journey that we have undertaken finally flails to a halt with the simple, quick tempo of “Field” that boils everything that went before down into an irresistible body-mover that cries out for shaking limbs.

Coherent Excitations is a great description of this collection of storming yet disorientating tunes. As your brain attempts to assimilate the information, so your body will be ignoring that and dragging you onto the floor. Enjoy it in its white vinyl, Markus Scholz-sleeved glory.

-Mr Olivetti-