MattxIbarra – Head Face & Meat 12″

‘Techno’ has always avoided definition. Be it referencing the classic experimental and working class sounds from its origins in the early 80’s in Germany or later in Detroit – to the now bloated mass that is electronic music / EDM as a whole, encompassing a seemingly impossibly vast range of tempos and stylistic choices. Regardless, outside of the commercialized mega-sphere of big room elite European techno, and ignoring whatever ones choice of definition for the genre, one thing has always been true of real underground techno and electronics: Innovation. Innovation is the essence of not just creating a unique record, but utilizing and maximizing (or perhaps more accurately, exercising effective reduction) to achieve new found results with what one has available. This is not music born of luxury apartments, impossibly expensive studios, or magazine covers, but rather that of an honest, highly studied and passionate voice in sound design and structure. It is with this voice Ibarra dismantles and reconstructs the genre with a unique, industrial tinged vision, creating an entirely distinct and powerful, engrossing realm all of his own. Techno (whatever that may be) spanning tracks that often leave behind traditional ‘beat’ centric structures, and lean more towards territories of melancholic music concrete and minimalist power electronics, marching into near tragedy ridden dystopian sci-fi bass heavy dirge colored by vibrant, filter squelched synths and radiating reverb soaked atmospheres- and then slamming back into impossibly massive Axis / Drumcode era 4×4 high BPM rolling kick drums. Above all, and most importantly, the innovation of his work is omnipresent. – Brandon Hill