Ekman – Acid 7
Study the way warehouse raves are portrayed in film, and you’ll find some dark undertones. There’s Woody Harrelson’s character in True Detective trudging through hordes of Louisiana teens in a derelict warehouse that seems to double as a spark-making factory, or Sharon Stone acting deviant amongst jacking fashionistas while Michael Douglas leers on in a v-neck sweater. To Gaspar Noe, they’re places of excess and sin where the shadow of violence lingers around the corner. In film, warehouse raves seem to be used to convey the fact that the protagonist is lost: lost in the crowd, lost among a sea of mindless, anonymous lemmings; futilely trying to find push through the crowd to get to something, somewhere, someone that’s out of reach.
If you’ve been following Berceuse Heroique, you know that the label fully commits to this same full-on misanthropy when they do techno. Last year’s slaying Kingdom for a Kiss EP gave two tunes full of caustic noise, teetering on total implosion, and the label’s sleeves have previously used unsettling imagery to underline the cruelty of humanity throughout the ages. BH006’s art gives off the most openly seething political anger yet, condemning David Cameron’s racist immigration policies and contrasting news excerpts about the rise of the xenophobic right-wing UKIP with a Guardian quote stating “UK’s lowest-paid employees to be classed as ‘not working enough”. Even before listening, the physical object of the record itself is unsettling.
As the producer behind the inaugural Berceuse Heroique release, Ekman’s return finds him crafting his starkest most damaging bruiser of a warehouse track yet. While all of Roel Dijcks’ output has geared towards the rough-rubbed side of analogue techno, “Acid 7” is like a popped blister – raw, fleshy, and surging with pain and oozing unidentifiable pus. “Acid 7” is only five minutes long, but almost half of that is filled with a dreadful, extended lead in – scrambled radio frequency setting the pulse of a panicked heart, and a thumping kick drum. Just around the time that a feeling of absolute foreboding kicks in, Dijcks lets loose with some patented Shed-style drums that hiss menacingly atop the track, which rides out for another several chaotic minutes, bringing it to a technically uncomplicated but thoroughly affecting conclusion.
Getting Vereker to remix “Acid 7” seems logical, insofar as his most recent work for The Trilogy Tapes has grasped at that same unease that Ekman exudes in the original. Caked in a layer of grime, the track sounds like it was recorded live from someone’s cassette player; but unlike the original, it springs to life almost instantaneously, winding and careening in and out of blasts of static noise. It’s debatable whether either Ekman, Vereker or Berceuse Heroique thinks that there’s any salvation to be found at the warehouse rave. If they do, you certainly won’t find it here.
Brendan Arnott
Tracklisting:
A1. Ekmam – Acid 7
B1. Ekman – Acid 7 (Vereker Remix)