Plastikman
Consumed

Imagine for a moment being a human being. Done? It's not very difficult, right? Now imagine being a human being trapped in a dark elevator that descends (or ascends?) for hours without stopping, giving you the impression that time has stopped in that dark and oppressive place. You will have a vague idea of the sensations this album offers, or rather ONE of the main sensations it can provide. The predominant one, above all, is uneasiness.

That charming "experimentalist" named Hawtin plays with sub-bass frequencies punctuated by electronic hisses that very much smell like Aphex Twin'n'Autechre in their most nightmarish version. Right with "Contain", the first track, you can sense the direction the album will take, which is that of the extremization of electronic repetitiveness, indeed Techno Minimalism. Some say that with this minimalism story, Hawtin and other artists (I wouldn't exclude Juan Atkins) have pulled one over on the entire world, achieving as much success as little the effort proclaimed in production. I don't know this and frankly, it doesn't interest me because I intend to talk about THIS album, and speaking of this album, one can only observe its extreme greatness and attempt, perhaps unsuccessfully, to describe the parallel dimension that it reveals to you slowly, oscillation after oscillation, which is at the same time cosmic and claustrophobic.

The tracks that make up this masterpiece are all characterized by the dark sub-bass sound that makes them all somewhat similar, but this choice does not imply a lack of ideas, rather a search for continuity in the sound material that manages to give the sensation of undertaking a veritable journey into the most hidden and dark recesses of one's mind. A single sonic block of obsessive psychedelic Techno, 100% unsuited for the dancefloor, close as much to the most avant-garde works of Pink Floyd as to the Neo-Ambient experiments made in Warp-records. A continuity, I was saying, that allows no rest for your already hallucinated mind. From the cosmic matter of "Ekko" to the oppressive ambient gloom of "Converge" (by the way, its "hallucinogenic" video is excellent), everything flows in a so perfect and annihilating manner for your poor (and unprepared) brain cells that you won't even notice the passage of time, and believe me, almost every track consumes time in quantity, giving it back to you synthesized in the most minimal and thus alienating way possible. This is precisely the most exceptional factor of the album: the sonic material is infinitely dilated with Machiavellian calculating demeanor, and hence the sensation of spaciousness and cosmicity (open space), which is at the same time counterpointed by the insistence of those beats so perfect and dense as not to let a single ray of sun come through, sounds that are sometimes capable of taking your breath away, preventing any way out from the impending claustrophobia (closed elevator). This is made evident in the track "In Side", the most claustrophobic of all tracks, over 12 minutes of pitch darkness, tense between spatial beats that echo endlessly and the occlusive ambient Synth that suffocates the piece with an unsettling approach.

The only moment you feel a relaxation is strangely the title track, "Consumed", which to a listener arriving there inevitably exhausted from "In Side" manages to provide a freshness that not even two strawberry popsicles could give at that moment. Rhythmic with a more pressing bass drum, typically techno, with the hat coming in later to wake up the listener's almost dead foot. "Consumed" is entirely opposed to the previous "In Side", cosmic and extensive where the other was claustrophobic, sunny where the other was dark. "Consumed" is, to put it bluntly, a masterpiece within the masterpiece. A piece that offers hope without uttering a word, an excellent track that is in itself a piece from the techno anthology. From this, it moves, always without interruptions, to "Passage (out)", an ambient track again dark and spectral, which does not betray the prevailing moods of the album, briefly abandoned by the title track. We return to space for another three minutes of shadow. In any case, that is absolutely the best way to end an album that is without a doubt among the best electronic works of the 20th century, alongside "Endtroducing", "Mezzanine" and various "Selected Ambient Works". And it's difficult to refute it because denying the greatness of such a work is useless and impossible without delving into personal tastes. Respect.

ps: coming back to earth then is wonderful.