Jerusalem-based IDM producer Yaniv Navot had his debut 12″ Music For Electric Lobe released through the Berlin based Digital Kranky label back in 2002 when he was just 21 years old, and it’s fair to say that since that early auspicious event he hasn’t glanced back over his shoulder. In the ensuing five years, he’ toured extensively, playing festivals and clubs through Israel, the UK and Europe, had his music played by the late John Peel and Resonance FM and also had his productions featured on compilations from 2Player, Kraked A.I. and Machine Records. This second album from Navot as Bloke Tears of the Broken Warrior emerges four years after his debut Experiments In Aesthetics and shows the Jerusalem-based producer working primarily with rhythmically-complex IDM textures that certainly call to mind the more drill-and-bass oriented corners of Rephlex and the Warp label.
After a brief opening segue (“Riding Into The Sea’) that slowly emerges from accelerating glitchy bass pulses and ominous humming tones, “Avoiding Death’ ushers forth a flurry of hyper-dextrous contorted junglist rhythms and snakelike quasi-acid synths. While it’s undeniably an impressive piece of work however, the entire effect is somewhat undermined by the fact that the track is a dead soundalike for something off Squarepusher’s 10-year old Hard Normal Daddy album – a musical vein that’s been mined by billions of aspirant “IDM’ jungle producers at this point. Indeed, the wasp-like analogue synth stabs that start to play against the hammering rhythms stand out as an absolute deadringer for one of Luke Vibert’s productions, the homage to influences in this case even extending down to the choice of drum and synth sounds employed.
Elsewhere, when Navot shifts his focus away from “Amen’ breakbeats towards acidic electro/techno, as on the 303-fuelled “The One Of A Kind’, the results end up sounding closer to “Analogue Bubblebath’-era Aphex Twin and by the time “Shot On Vanmish’ arrives with its “Come On My Selector’ pastiche of sped-up vocal samples and steppy breakbeat timestretching, the overriding sense of over-familiarity is impossible to ignore. While Tears of the Broken Warrior contains some undeniably impressive moments, hopefully future releases will show Navot developing a sound more distinct from that of his influences.
Chris Downton
