Netherworld
Zastrugi
Glacial Movements
Ok, “Techno Glacial” is now officially a thing. While I haven’t ever quite distinguished between House, Hard House and Deep House, this odd mixture of droning sounds and low-impact beats is a space I’ve never experienced before. There are five rather long tracks here, each named after a phenomenon of Arctic life that did not appear in Frank Zappa’s similarly chilly “Apostrophe.” The album title is a type of difficult-to-cross eroded snow, the second cut named for an overhanging chunk of snow sculpted by the wind, the third a sort of fizzing noise that icebergs make. Netherworld (Alessandro Tedeschi) is thorough if not obsessive, and it’s not clear if these sounds are based on his own explorations, or of home-bound research devoid of Pemmican-fueled snow blindness.
With these low-keyed beats no one expects a sweaty night on the club floor, this is more a John Digweed styled “stare at your shoes” sound than a rip-snorting boogie-till-you-puke sort of techno. Sometimes voices, mysterious and disinterested float by: are they the last calls for help from a lost Danish expedition, a third world astronaut’s data report distorted by a Ionospheric storms, or just that way-to-hip guy down the bar acting all euro trash? When those voices are gone we are left along on the icecap with only the wind and the beats to warm us. But now I’m too cold to explore any more, I think I’ll make one last journal entry and then freeze to death peacefully.
