Toronto-based electro/IDM producer Carl Heindl (aka Sincere Trade) is certainly a busy guy. Alongside promoter partner Knifehandchop, he’s responsible for Toronto’s long-running monthly Math Hooker night, whose eclectic music policy has seen a diverse range of international guests pass through its doors. Influenced by early Skinny Puppy, Muslimgauze and Brian Eno, Heindl’s musical output as Sincere Trade occupies a space somewhere between dark ambience and intricate IDM, with this second album Between You And Me on Ontario label Sublight emerging a scant 12 months after his debut offering If You Cannot Beat Them on Dross:tik Records.
Recorded between 2005 and 2006, the 10 tracks collected here show Heindl balancing hyper-precise rhythmic programming with an overriding sense of contemplative ambience that contains keyboard motifs that appear distinctly influenced by Eno’s more piano-dominated moments. Opening track “Turn’ certainly calls to mind the slow, treacherous journey of an isolated explorer trekking through some frigid landscape as delicate synthetic guitar plucks echo out over an undulating backdrop of calmly brooding bass pads, the arrival of complex skittering polyrhythmic pulses gradually building the sense of contemplative momentum. The electro-industrial edged “Forsas’ suggests gothier directions ahead with Heindl’s own distorted vocals (“Sometimes you break / testing the hard points”) battling for space with bursts of digital noise, stabbing synths and hammering IDM breakbeats in a moment that suggests Richard H. Kirk battling AFX, but it proves to be something of an atypical moment here, with the remainder of the tracklisting inhabiting considerably calmer waters.
More ambient moments such as “Creeping Serif’ and the delicately filmic “Push Pin Tactics’ smoothly balance a calming surface layer of elegant keyboard pads with intricately detailed rhythmic programming that hints at the dexterous digital trickery of Chris Clark or Telefon Tel Aviv, the more jagged and furious edges buffed away by the lulling atmospheres generated by the almost modern-classical sounding arrangements. While it’s consistently impressive and engaging stuff, over Between You And Me‘s 10 tracks, Heindl’s decision to restrict himself to more or less the same basic elements (icily ambient pads, skittering jagged IDM breakbeats) for the remainder of the album does mean that a certain element of repetition does start to creep in after a while, rendering this an extremely strong album that just lacks that slight extra vital spark to make it really memorable.
Chris Downton
