In its brazen assent to the chatter of electronics, Kotra and Zavaloka manage a broad series of warping, dimension-stretching motions and gestures. Pointillist blips squeeze out of wormholes and fluttering electronic tones buzz in and out like crickets. Little room is left for a breather, its shrill tinniness quickly balloons to gargantuan proportions and the aqueous swirl of lethargic drones inculcates a heightened state of drowsiness. Time and again, this spurs on a fine nocturnal, urban air, coated in an enervated film of sweat and anxiety. On no infrequent occasion, however, all this seething and loquacious play amounts to an undifferentiated, if pleasingly chaotic, mass of drones, whirrs, bleeps, ad hisses.
This is diminished, in part, on account of the fact that rhythm still has a certain part to play in the proceedings. With ‘Analogue Tender’, feverish rainbow-coloured particles, flutes and sequences run amok. The tracks heavy-set rhythm proves just steady enough to allow the pair to burrow down into an elaborate series of tunnels, in which more fully formed sound shapes rear up and then disappear pleasingly from view. Elsewhere, the approach to rhythm is additive, and the basic overload and erasure of gaps is an enticing elixir. But on much of the rest of the recording, the group displays too much of an intentional nomadism, flirting with everything from funk to flamenco. No doubt, a richness of sound abounds; and the sheer quantity and proximity of the pieces are indeed asking something worth attending to; yet it could well be more adroitly framed.
Max Schaefer
