Apegenine Recordings

02 "I am always amazed at the ubiquitousness of and extreme networking of the electronica scene, where small labels from one continent get artists from another continent and hire a friend from a third continent to do the graphics. Makes the world we live in a smaller but a lot warmer place. “strength in numbers” does sound like ipod-fodder for the (post-)modern urban nomade-type, who travels airport lounges and three-night-stops in metropoles everywhere with his laptop, a small suitcase and a credit card for a living. Those with the faible for japanese design, french house and uk fiction. Hard to pin down, so the broad label of electronica will have to do.
Sometimes I wonder if the music I am listening to is really up to date. If it is the sort of “fringe” music, I expect it to be, or if there is something else that I am missing out on. Next I like to search out my old, worn 7” copy of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” to listen to some timeless classic, and I find seven inch copys of Koto’s “Visitor” and Off’s “Electrica Salsa” right next to it, and that coincidental whack on my head of musical history itself gives me back some of the confidence I lacked, and I find, that I know that everything is moving forward. Maybe not exactly straight forward, but an idea of progression arises from the depth of what has gone on before that helps me to focus on what is coming up ahead. Notwithstanding the fact, that somewhere in our own musical history there always lurks embarrassment, and this being true for everyone and having lived through various loops of cool / uncool / cool again but in a retro way / definitely not cool / cool in a nostalgic way because of no interest anymore and grown into a classic gives me even more confidence. Moreover, I mention Barry Manilow and Koto for two reasons: embarrassment and Italo House. You chose which one stands for what or not. Because I find a lot of the aesthetics of Italo House – to wit: remember “Tarzan Boy” and then check the melody in “Select”, these two are only a few notes away from each other – in the glitchy, post-modern electronica idm of Surasshu, very much to my own embarrassment. The bass line creeping up in “init” or the synthie-fanfares and the keyboard line in “It is as you say” are like straight off from some obscure Italo House sampler only Jean Bach would know about. That bass-line in “cut up” comes straight from Grandmaster Flash. Considering that at 20 years of age, Steven Velema aka Surasshu aka \slash, is hardly of the age to have lived through the heydays of Italo House, he has either inherited the feeling through his mothers womb when she went out dancing while pregnant, or is an avid record scout. What is different of course are almost twenty years of progression, mainly on the technical and on the musical side. Back then analogue synthesizers cost as much as a nice house for a small family. Today you can download decent software for free from the internet. Of course, if you are inclined towards perfection and state-of-the-art-tools you can spend a shitload of money still. But you’ll also get a lot more than a few knobs to twiddle. And the actual music on “strength in numbers” is a far stretch from Italo House, but some of the sounds creeping up here and there sound like straight from the Eighties. But those are always mixed into avid experiments that stretch from all parts of the electronica universe, even including industrial noise. No straight rhythms, breaks almost every other blink of the eye, lines being drawn and erased again, an eclectic architecture from sound that sounds like the soundtrack to fastforwarded night shots of airports, subways or urban city traffic. You know the stock footage. Did Surasshu turn the loop and his heading backwards into what is to become the next new? Because the sound is not at all retro or old-fashioned, actually the complete opposite: a polished, glitchy but in all its eclecticism and experimentalism very homogenous block of music (And if you don’t believe me, check out the thanks list: aphex twin, autechre, plaid, neptunes, timbaland, prefuse 73, Angelo Badalamenti, Muse, The Beatles and many others. Call that a wide variety (and thanks for mentioning so I don’t have to)). He thankfully keeps away from the ostentative theatralic antics of original Italo House, the drumrolls and spaceship lift off sounds. Surasshu has his own, a lot more subtle ways to dish out dynamics and raised hands. It his feat to have replaced the dancefloor with experiments and the straight beats with some idm-beats. Why did that take so long? There is a theory forming about the actual embarrassment factor of Italo House but I don’t have time for that right now… ''

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