For quite some time, Strategy’s Paul Dickow has spent his lunch breaks amongst the geeks, talking about the aesthetics of machines and their sounds all day long. Now he wants to play with the cool kids again. The producer from Portland, Oregon, has steadily increased his output over the previous months, releasing his latest stuff at the labels Idle Hands and 100% Silk. With the »Pressure Wassure EP«, he has left behind the somewhat ordinary balearic-sounds and has instead come forward with quite a strong release. All four tracks speak a similar language when it comes to their sounds, and yet they are completely different in terms of their styles. Paul Dickow is racing through the last 20 years, taking a stop in 1994 (»Osmosis«), in 1999 (»Bubble ‘n Snare«), then around 2004 (»Mesohippos«) until he finally arrives in 2009 (»Tainted«). It’s almost as if Paul Dickow is trying to catch up with music history by adopting individual semantics of different eras of electronic music. Therefore, he jumps from dance music to drum’n’bass to house and then finally to dubstep. Been there, done that. On the »Pressure Wassure EP«, Strategy is taking up the role of a linguist, studying foreign languages and trying to imitate their sounds as closely as possible. He’ll never be able to speak like a native speaker, he’ll always be a tiny bit off. He is copying it without adding anything to it – and still, he reveals so much about the constitution of electronic music. Through this practical work shop, he has basically deciphered its whole structure.
Pressure Wassure
