Arandel
In D

Beyond techno.
Beyond its clubbing nature, even a bit flashy if you will, beyond the classic repetitive and eardrum-breaking "tunz tunz" that its detractors want to confine it to. Over the years, techno has escaped these clichés, it has evolved and enriched itself with nuances, shifting from its disco roots to more intimate and personal dimensions reaching into home multimedia players, it has been slowed down, sped up, stripped down, shot into dreamlike and cosmic dimensions.
Arandel starts from here. Fifty minutes where techno is not techno, entwining with the most multifaceted elements to create a rather colorful ambient/IDM electronic music that almost never loses the genre's inherent physicality, even in its most subdued and slow moments.
Take the first two tracks as an example: minimal techno tinged with dub, a geometric and dark sound composed of crisp beats surrounded by ethereal synths, glitches, ethereal voices, and wind instruments with a deep and distant sound.
The mystical "In D#6" would not look out of place in a psychedelic folk album: vocal chants stand out over a violin line accompanied by a string instrument, while in "In D#7" romantic strings intertwine with dreamlike and warm techno: a steady beat and a desire to emote, to wander through sidereal spaces while remaining anchored to one's bed.
And so it continues with soft keyboard touches, field recordings, glitches, beats that are sometimes sharp and full, sometimes distant and dreamy, mystical, dark, or aqueous atmospheres, suspended in vortices of synths that are at times disorienting, at times warm and enveloping, among chamber strings and winds.
"In D" is an original, well-crafted album, never cold or trivial, drawing from multiple sources within the IDM landscape of recent years (Four Tet, Deepchord Presents Echospace, Lulu Rouge, to name a few). One of the best releases of the year.

4.5