Antiguo Automata Mexicano (AAM) is the musical project of Angel Sanchez Borges. Borges is also a media artist experimenting with generative video and audio and has been active since the late 80s in Mexico’s underground art and music scenes. Following on the heels of a well regarded album for the Background label, AAM releases another full length release, Kraut Slut. Kraut Slut is, apparently, a “a concrete account of the sound that travels through the Mitte district of Berlin”. That, and a bunch of in jokes in the track names and sample sources.
Sensibly on a pure musical level, AAM is a warm mix of bubbling minimal techno and spacious ambient electronics with just enough quirk, pops and crackles to sit somewhere between the dancefloor and headphone earspace. ‘Rother, Dinger, You and Me’ trundles along on analogue synths until midway through when it opens up into cavernous space with processed bell tones; ‘Mille’ likewise changes midway through with heavily distorted guitar fuzz playing a lovely slow drawn out melancholy sequence; whilst ‘Harm’ submerges robot burbles in lush gaseous atmospheres.
There is an oversupply of ‘minimal’ techno at the moment and AAM’s closest touchstones are closer to Wolfgang Voigt’s pulsating drones of his Gas project, and the processing of Fennesz. Whilst it never reaches the heights of these, there is enough going on here to make it worth lending ears to.
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