Hologram Teen – Marsangst EP (Happy Robots)

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French electronic producer / multi-instrumentalist Morgane Lhote is best known to many listeners for her membership in Stereolab’s band lineup during the years spanning 1995-2001, but her solo work as Hologram Teen offers up a considerably different proposition, eschewing widescreen exotica in favour of colourful and playful dance grooves. In the wake of last year’s debut single on Deep Distance ‘Post-Apocalypteacakes’, this latest EP ‘Marsangst’ on Happy Robots offers up four new tracks, with a distinct vein of eccentricity running through all of them. ‘Marsangst’ leads things off with a bouncy wander through punching kickdrums and blocky arcade game synths that sees a shuffling groove underlying the toms and hi-hats, but it isn’t long before things enter more sinister territory as the synth arpeggios shift into minor keys and spooky robovocals roll back and forth through the mix.

If the aforementioned track manages to veil a faint sense of uneasiness behind its propulsive dancefloor rhythms, ‘Hex These Days’ goes for a slightly grittier feel, stacking house handclaps against buzzing analogue synths and stuttered vocal stabs, before the sudden emergence of a sampled revivalist preacher gives way to a phased out breakdown section that easily one of the most epic moments here, twinkling synths and all. Elsewhere, ‘Scratches en Series’ shifts the gears down a few notches into a hiphop-centred electro groove as clicking 808 toms wind their way against a chunky boom-bap beat and mellow synths, the addition of cut-up and stuttered French vocal samples calling to mind The Art Of Noise as the beats get filtered and pitchshifted. Finally, ‘Franmaster Glash’ offers up what are easily the dirtiest electro grooves on offer here, its fusion of juddering bass synths, pitch-bent melodies and flexing electro rhythms suggesting one of Luke Vibert’s darker excursions more than anything else. If you’re after a dose of weirdly hard to place creepiness in your electro, this is well worth checking out.

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