Jake Mandell
Love Songs for Machines
Carpark
Forsaking the normal dancefloor fodder that befalls many an artist, Jake Mandell opts for the subterranean recesses where dance glitches provide for the beats to shock you like a faulty electrical outlet. But in its essence, Love Songs is in fact Mandell’s ode to his machine obsession, with the emotional core much intact. “Magik Cirkuits” arrives on your doorstep with subtle strings ala the ambient side of Aphex Twin, with the straight beats not 100% symmetrical, but that•s what arouses curiosity from his music after all.
It would be too ungrateful to sink this record into the “experimental” or “techno” categories, because the enveloping sounds are all encompassing and deserve more credit than that. Like the fragmented, geometrical portrait adorning the cover, Mandell’s sound structures take shape in much the same way. The cheekily titled songs “Prince and the Palm” and “Divinity Takes a Dive” will arouse your lobes with medium-paced breakbeats and wispy cellos/strings carrying you inside Mandell’s machines. Love Songs should tear the highbrows off pseudo-intellectual IDM kids and pierce the drug-addled soul of your average raver, creating something all the more unique and unifying.
Carpark Records, PO Box 20368, New York, NY 10009, http://www.carparkrecords.com
