Rescate 137

Preferring to leave all the humour and warmth at the feet of his Super-Collider side project, Brighton techno wizard Christian Vogel appears to have let his studio equipment run itself for the duration of this album.

There’s a loose aquatic theme running throughout Rescate 137, but that’s about the only architecture you could ascribe to it – fractured, distressed beats move into peripheral vision and across the stereo pan, and if any sort of solid form emerges from the murk, it’s repeated enough times as to render it next-to-meaningless.

Tracks like the nightmarish ‘Me And My Shadow’ and the twisted take on turntablist beat-juggling excess, ‘Wind From Nowhere’ serve as interesting academic excursions into abstraction, but steadfastly refuse to get even a little bit stoopid. Or fun. If album-closer ‘Rescate Freeformed Giggles’ had a lyric sheet, it’d go a little something like this: “Blarp/Rattle/Puuuurp/Cheroot [no chorus x4]” There is, in fact, a worryingly large number of electronic flatulence noises in evidence across the ten tracks – perhaps Mr. Vogel’s actually having a laugh after all.

You just know, with track titles like ‘Grainiak Burn’ and ‘La Isla Piscola’, not to expect a Fat Les record, but after 55 minutes of synapse-melting sonic experimentia, you’re aching to get pissed and red-faced on vile cocktails while bellowing ‘Vindaloooooo!’ at your baffled pet labrador. Just remember this: dogs are equipped well for drinking water, and not for banana daiquiris.