Plastikman
Sheet One

Horror, how is it possible that the Debaser archive is missing a review of the definitive minimal-acid album? Omega Kid comes to the rescue. Year 1993, there's one more tech-savvy person around, but Richie Hawtin was different, drawing an imaginary line between Windsor, Chicago, and Detroit, assimilating the great early techno school, but the result was his and his alone. Sheet One came to grab the entire acid community by the collar and take it to an underground world, where pitch-darkness reigns, and the light at the end of the tunnel is a strobe. Welcome to the experimental project Plastikman, the music you dance to in your brain when the night is over, the dancefloor empties, the clock shows tiny hours, and psychotropic substances lead you to unimaginable drifts. Led by the historic deformed and vaguely alien mascot, the album had the power of a decree written with the TB-303. A journey rich in meaning, but not a walk in the park.

Drp immediately immerses the listener in an ocean of synths and drones for a short ambient interlude, which we can define as the greatest mockery in the history of electronic music, the melody and delicacy completely misleading compared to what awaits us in the next 60 minutes (approximately): minimalism to the extreme, essential and polished sounds, extreme alienation. The plane takes off and we find ourselves in Plasticity, an absolute masterpiece and the best track of an album that immediately opens at its best. Endless, hypnotic tribal percussion plays with the legendary 303 acid line in continuous variation and distorted vocal samples, children? Laughing aliens? What matters is the sinister effect, aided by brief but targeted spectral synths. It’s a journey you wouldn’t want to take alone. But there's no hand to hold onto, and you must continue. Things obviously get complicated with Gak, Plastikman’s thicket, built of undefinable synths and samples. In this track, the influence of the Chicago school is strong, but also the desire to create something comparable to the prog of the seventies. As usual, what emerges is something by Hawtin, and only his. Okx is a small vocal insert by Richie that tries to make us think that what we heard is not a sonic monolith sent by future machines, but it's hard to believe him. Helikopter (with a K, absolutely!) is essentially the ancestor of Spastik: those who loved the track will feel at home, as it is an endless rhythmic variation, curious filterings, and tweaks, the effect is similar to a helicopter. Not among the album’s highlights, but still not to be underestimated.

Glob kicks with an almost funky bassline, it’s a pity it's always the 303 set to very low frequencies, pray that your sound system is up to it. Perhaps it's the most "house" track of the work, the snare and hi-hat structure is quite articulated, but little more than a pastime for the album’s second bomb, Plasticine, the ideal twin of Plasticity, being substantially very similar. The 303 is exploited with great cleverness, offering the inevitable acid line but enriched by a second channel used as a bass-pad creating a lot of atmosphere. Personally, I find Plasticity more fascinating, but these two are without a doubt the undisputed queens of Sheet One, they are tracks that made history and influenced an entire genre. Koma is the only truly relaxing interlude of the album, in this case, the 303 is interpreted in a completely different way, resulting delicate, almost dreamy, Hawtin enhances the vaguely idyllic general effect - contrasting with the title - by adding various sound samples that temporarily distance us from the alienating coldness of the machines. But, as said, it's just an interlude. Smak awaits us at the terminus of a journey that will not end well: percussion, initially barely hinted and secondary, transforms into a distorted hardcore beat, the 303 slices and bleeds, spectral synths envelop the listener, the anxiety grows. This concluding track has always stimulated the imagination of those who love interpreting the concept of Sheet One, assuming it has one. Hawtin himself in an interview left some clues, considering the piece a final balance for the listener, to realize where they have arrived and what their next destination will be. A vocal sampling from The Outer Limits definitively closes the album, "There are powers in the universe beyond your knowledge, you still have much to learn, to explore... go home and reflect on the mysteries of the universe, now I will leave you in peace."

Richie Hawtin will manage to surpass himself with the subsequent Musik, but Sheet One remains one of the most electrifying debuts in the history of electronic music, a seminal record that every enthusiast should listen to at least once in their lifetime. Augh.