Meet Machine, a no-frills techno label run by Melbourne, Australia’s SImon Slieker and Andrew Till (formely label manager of legendary leftfield label Psy-Harmonics). They now have clocked a total of ten releases, most of them from local producers. This venture is supported by monthly parties at small venue MyAeon, located in inner-suburban Brunswick.
G3D9 is the tenth artist to release on Machine, and the general pace of Lost is hypnotic and pounding, yet spacious and deep.
Lead track ‘Antikythera’ jumps right into these elements with a gritty, off-beat element siding the steady 4-4, progressively joined by whirring and unwinding modular synths in the background, and complimented by high hats to create an irresistable and dark dirge. Distopia delivers a similar-style drum pattern, this time with a more tangible and simple melodic hook.
‘Otuken’ is just right for me personally as a listener, it’s dark and the drums are slightly muddy to compliment the background mechanical synth whirring. The industrial and mechanical atmosphere of this track is unrelenting, but strangely soothing, with elements that may seem to more fussy producers to not be clean, but it’s mainly about the objective spell cast here. Perfect black hole music. ‘Yamatai’ is what I would consider true minimalism in techno, with the ever-present 4-4 drumming only occasionally interspersed with a snare element at sporadic and disjointed bars.
The tracks in Lost don’t change much, but the appeal and aim is toward “real” techno. In the end, Lost is programmed for purposes of inducing listeners into a trance, which is why the repetitive murky and pounding drums work here, and it does succeed in its aesthetic aim as an album. Techno fans will raise their champagne flutes, whilst non-fans will be yawning a bit at this, but who are they to know about what the appeal of “real” techno is, right?
