Plastikman
Artifakts (BC)

Plastikman is just one of the many pseudonyms of Richie Hawtin, the father of European Techno. Plastikman is probably the moniker with which the English DJ has experimented the most and created his best works. It's quite sad to listen to this album and think about the progressive degradation in Hawtin's career, now reduced to mimicking the various Pseudo Techno producers of this turn of the millennium. But this isn't what we want to talk about, is it?

So let's talk about this "Artifakts (BC)", probably the most complex and dark work of his career. We have seven tracks, seventy-two minutes. And from this alone, you can guess that the product in question is far from easy listening or in line with Techno standards of the time. In fact, while elsewhere there was a preference for high bpm and easy listening, the intentions here are completely different. Hawtin enjoys playing with Ambient Techno beats, calm atmospheres, and low bpm. It should be noted that this work, despite being released in 1998, contains tracks that were created and abandoned in the recent past (they were supposed to be on the disappeared "Klinik"). But let's get to the work itself.

The album opens with three slow tempo tracks - "Korridor", "Psyk", "Pakard" - which more or less boast the same compositional structure and enjoy significant sonic expansions (listen to the lysergic beats in "Psyk"). Among the three, the one that stands out is "Pakard", twelve minutes of trip with one of the best beats ever composed in the Ambient Techno field. The listener is led astray by this almost seductive, dark but calm opening since "Hypokondriak" breaks the calm, one of the sickest tracks in Hawtin’s entire history. A track entirely based on the essence of an obsessive and pressing beat, repeated to exhaustion. Almost a renunciation of everything mentioned in the first twenty-five minutes. The storm after the calm. "Rekall" lowers again the tempo, still resulting less slow than the opening trio, with an enveloping draw and pleasant basslines. Surely among the top three tracks of this album. "Skizofrenik" somewhat revisits what was already mentioned in "Hypokondriak", with a beat that seems ready to explode at any moment. We all fear its explosion. But nothing changes, and the track remains static, possibly resulting in the least successful episode of the lot (which still means being ten years ahead of 70% of the producers of the time). "Are Friends Electrik/Lodgikal Nonsense" closes it all, summarizing a bit of everything seen throughout the album, still maintaining a higher speed than the more Ambient moments of this work. Beautiful ending with the gradual fading of speed that gives way to a break with one of the best beats heard so far. It will be this very beat to close the piece (if you don't consider the track's end made up of fairly disconnected voices, justifying the "Lodgikal Nonsense" that appears as the second title of the track). And what a better closure.

In the Ambient Techno realm, few have managed to reach these levels, and still, listening to such an album results as an experience far too advanced for the standards of a now dormant scene. Fewer bpm but more quality: this is the lesson that the current Richie Hawtin should learn. Or maybe all the raver kids today. Another reason to resurrect this milestone.