I am unsure whether to assign Ukkonen’s name as homage to Esko Ukkonen’s algorithm or to the Finnish movie of the same name. However this Finnish musician is onto something, the album is a smooth groove pristine electronic mid paced gem of an album that re-imagines aspects of early Detroit, deep house music and sparse bright ambient techno. Ukkonen describes it as “it’s about spaces – spaces in the mixing, spaces between notes and creating imaginary spaces that work against each other in unusual ways.” The spaces can be just drops in the rhythm patterns creating a bounce in the beat, irregular shapes coming together with ideas of patterns and brief skips in the predictive nature leads it to surprise the mind and shoes as to it’s content.
Title track ‘Spatia’ is the clearest example of this bringing back the the bright skeletal tone programming over warm low basslines and the flick of typewriter styled beats hitting foil. It glistens in a warm reminiscence of early Jaun Atkin brought into contemporary view with more metallic futurism and the sound produced to sparkle like a new penny. Opening track ‘Kerrokset’s is a more contemporary bass laden dub techno track with glitch elements and a welcoming melodic line. ‘ Primed’ is a skittish pacy number to serve an insistent dancefloor of electronic bleeps, emissions blurts building in quite a complex pattern. ‘Tresgradus’, plays an tight hard drum programming of against a bassline with effects against an ambient electronic chord variations forming a harmonic backdrop. ‘ Cordiskator’ begins as a ponderous synth track with drum programming and effects moving towards but never reaching a postulated high it closes the album like a warm up dj.
It’s an early effort and the artist is building the enigmatic faceless techno angle, but the complexity and production may lead somewhere more pronounced after the myriad of impressions have subsided.
Innerversitysound
