For 25 years now, techno has grown and mutated organically, sometimes within sight of the mainstream but mostly (and thankfully) away from this glare. Shlomi Aber releases his debut artist album, State Of No One, in this context and it really can be used as an exemplar of why techno still exists as a vital form and not just as anachronistic nostalgia.
Here, techno is defined by a pallette of sounds and a production mindset. While a few of the tracks – ‘Eastern Breeze’, ‘Moods’ and ‘Sea Of Sand’, for example – work as dance floor stompers in the manner traditionally associated with the form, there is a vast range of actual styles on the album. ‘The Paradise Garage’ is ambient textures eventually punctuated by an IDM hip-hop groove. ‘Don’t Be A Fool’ and ‘Random Fiction’ even dare to successfully add songs and singers to the resolute machine-ness of the music. ‘The Thing That Nobody Knows’ glitches and processes a few simple sounds into a swelling mood piece. While Aber has released a string of 12″ vinyl DJ tools over the last 18 months, here he uses the album format to excellent effect. There is an ebb and flow, lightness and darkness, variety across the tracks which run as a coherent listening experience. It’s blips and bleeps, which is what really defines it as techno, but it uses sonic limitations as parameters in which to create with focus.
If rock music has been able to successfully reinvent itself (kind-of!) over half a century with a basic palette of guitar, bass and drums, there is no reason that techno can’t do the same. State Of No One is ample evidence of how.
Adrian Elmer
