Title: Tar Labs Pt. 1
Artist: Tar Miles
Release Date: 24 Sept 2013
Genre: Techno
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Release Label: Etched Traumas
This is definitely a throwback for me. It sounds like something that could have been released in the 1970’s by Tangerine Dream or Kraftwerk. Analog synthesizers, sequencers and a drum machine underlying all sorts of keyboard washes and rhythmic shifts.
But, this isn’t 1970’s synthesizer music. It’s definitely techno music as if it had somehow fallen through a rift in time and been re-interpreted by Kraftwerk.
And that’s what Thanos Papadopoulos has done here. He’s taken a different approach to creating modern dance music, re-interpreted through the history of electronic music. And, then to cap it all off, he’s added some new and unique twists and variations within these four tracks that take them into a different dimension.
I’m typically not much of a techno fan. But, this is one of the cases where make an exception. There’s lots of details paid to the layering of the synthesizers. Lots of attention to creating rhythmic counterpoint and variations that transcend the idea of this being techno music. It’s every bit as listenable as it is dance-able.
This is like taking a trip back to the old pulp science fiction stories or a TV series like Lost In Space and re-interpreting the narratives, without changing the characters or the settings. It all looks and sounds terribly old, but it’s definitely new. And that is an accomplishment that few artists actually undertake, much less succeed at these days.
Tar Miles: Tar Labs Pt. 1
Free
8.5
