Monday 31 January 2011

REVIEW: The Mekano Set - Maastricht EP

The Mekano Set and me go way back, to the dawn of NFR (Check out this t-shirt in the photo below!...if you can make it out....), but Milk has a longer history with his own music, honing his skills with years on the floor as a knob twiddling noise manipulator then in the production chair for years more poring over the details in his own band, The Mekano Set


A band who surely missed out by a matter of mere months on being included in the thrust of Grave Wave iconography of last year, they now have a fully produced ep up everywhere - Spotify, iTunes, EMusic, and my favourite - Bandcamp.  I'm calling out the likes of The Soft Moon and Mekano Set as potential pall-bearers to the the aftershocks of the neo-electro-goth industrial-pop they produce,and Mishka championed at full pelt in 2010. I'm all up for more darkness this year, especially when it comes dressed as beguilingly as these tracks.

There's a duality of grim undercurrent and glittery propulsion here, in the same way a New Order always shouldered something dark, in spite of their disco exhortations; the vocals lean into the shadows pulling the light in with them but the basslines and synths intertwine in an upward spiral propelling the songs towards a lighter sphere - like hot and cold currents passing past each other the result is a swirling sucking vortex that's a little disorienting at first but once acclimatised (and who wouldn't be by now, after a year of darkwave-electro-drone wytch hause, ja?) you get caught in the stream of consciousness and punched along with the rush of its creator. This sound is similar to that found in several of the Disaro bands on the Isvolt compilation, but where there's a lot of dischordant claustrophobia in those bands Mekano Set diverge at that point with a looser more spacious production, like White Ring, Modern Witch, or Light Asylum, into the thrusting glitch of Dirty Hand Job and the solar planing Don't Eat The Sweets - The track I've posted below. It's a reworked version of one I used to play out regularly in DJ sets - if we ever had staples, then this was one.

Buy the six track ep for just £5 from Bandcamp

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