Richie Hawtin
Concept 1 96:CD/VR

THE REVIEW

I don't want to bore you with big words and abstract concepts about why I'm crazy about this music (and mind you, in less than a week four or five people have indulged in calling it more noise than anything else), it's just that when I listen to it, I'm happy. I'm not a minimal enthusiast; like everything else, I like it when it's done well.

And you?

Are you enthusiastic about minimal? Well, then this is your album.

Do you despise minimal because it's now just an overused trend and all the tracks seem cookie-cutter? Well, this is still your album: simply because this is the template, the matrix.

First came techno, and okay, it was cool, so geometric, intangible, yet so physical and psychedelic, but it wasn't enough. Then along came Richie Hawtin (better known as Plastikman) who in 1996 released twelve singles, one a month, creating the definitive sound: he took the gummy, relentless beat, exaggerated it, and threw away almost everything else, leaving some evocative synth phrases and maybe a reverb here and there. Nothing more. An exemplary recipe in its simplicity.

And then the delirium. Who can resist such a rhythmic/sonic assault? Certainly not me.

In fact, I'm hooked. Five days and this Concept 1 hasn't left my ears: my legs are pure tense muscle fiber and my brain is wandering in hyperspace.

Don't believe me? Come on, my dear friends, somehow get the album, put it on and join me because in this cosmic void there's room for everyone.

PS: a really cool reissue of this Concept 1 has just come out. It includes the twelve singles released in '96 and collected by the Minus label in '98 under the name Concept 1 96:CD as well as the variations of those same tracks by the crazy German Thomas Brinkmann, created by playing the vinyl with a modified turntable (the result is something even more absurd, if possible, liquid and experimental). Don't miss it.