Finnish electronic musician / producer Riku Annala has apparently been experimenting with guitars, drums, synths and tracker programs since his early teens, playing in a couple of minor band projects along the way, but his first recorded output was his 2006 debut EP as Recue “Between Stations’, released through Louisville-based netlabel One. Two years on, this follow-up album on Rednetic “All The Wrong Places’ sees Annala maintaining the core themes of IDM, dub and ambience that featured throughout “Between Stations’ whilst taking his productions to even more intricate and emotionally evocative levels. The appropriately-titled “Gbliss’ certainly provides a good taste of the sorts of lush, majestic atmospheres explored throughout this album, opening proceedings with a warm, dubbed-out wash of trailing harmonic tones, burbling electronics and subaquatic pulses much in a similar manner to Pole, before a tight rhythmic snap locks into place, providing a spidery backbone for glittering melodic pads reminiscent of The Black Dog and distant whirring tones that call to mind the distant chatter of insects.
By contrast, “Korento’ starts off considerably more forbidding and wiry, with complex DSP programming sending fractured breakbeats back and forth beneath forlorn, heavily-phased IDM synths that manage to gradually drag the mood further from the darkness, before “Kalmacty’ takes things off on a skittering IDM-hop tip that pits Prefuse 73-esque beat manipulation against vast, moody bass synths and twinkling, New Wave-kissed keys, resulting in what’s easily one of this collection’ strongest moments. It’s also something of a stylistically diverse collection, with “Kasvoton’ even offering up a digression into floaty yet contorted minimal techno that calls to mind Vadislav Delay at points. In addition to the seven new tracks collected here, there’ also an additional two remixes provided here by recent Planet Mu signing Eero Johannes and frequent Recue live collaborator Badloop that manage strangely enough to break the sense of melancholy generated by dragging things far closer to rigid electro-funk. Easily one of the best releases I’ve heard on Rednetic so far.
