On his previous EP S Olbricht wanted too much, or rather something that he isn’t quite made for: He wanted to provide the dancefloor with straight beats adhered to conventions. However, the founder of the label Farbwechsel is much more suited for a different kind of sound – the sound that helped him make a name for himself through Opal Tapes and to which he is now returning on his new 12” for the Slovakian imprint Proto Sites. And while »Trancess« starts out with kick drum hammerings in four out of six tracks, it seems oddly out of place each time it kicks in. Stubborn and hostile to groove, like a metronome, it’s not much more than a rhythmic back drop for all the rustling and cheeping that Martin Mikolai (as the Hungarian is actually called) makes vibrate in his noisy soundscapes. There’s a juxtaposition between beats without accentuation and streaky sound experiments, causing suspense, which, after the triumphant beginning, he picks up at the end of the record with the title track and the closer »Cambran«, a tremendous crescendo without a sufficient resolution to follow. The record’s mid-section is dominated by a muffled sounding hauntology. For two whole tracks, »Trancess« sounds like the nightmare low on serotonin suggested by the title, processing the previous night’s trance party. The elegiac ambient »Acertid« by the Imre Kiss-Kollaboration reminds us of washed out pieces by Leyland James Kirby or of Lee Gamble’s debut with PAN. »Onhom«, on the other hand, is carried by the rattling of trains (or pointillist trance riffs?) and seems to have frozen a euphoric climax, turning it into a loop of departure. The consequences are spooky: The dancefloor isn’t the final destination anymore, but rather a starting point for nebulous, false journeys down memory lane. Thankfully, that’s S Olbricht’s speciality.
Trancess
