Ital – Endgame
Daniel Martin-McCormick’s music as Ital may have changed significantly since his debut in 2011, but it has always been tied to dance music culture’s more sensual side. On his 100% Silk singles he channelled this sensuality through music looking to Paradise Garage-era house and disco, while his albums on Planet Mu took this type of tactile house to more abstract places, using sampled pop vocals to evoke a different kind of sensuality. It’s what’s made Martin-McCormick’s music stand out for so many years; while many of his peers in New York have been wringing ever more grit from their hardware, his sound has been heading in the opposite direction.
His third album, Endgame, feels very much the culmination of this direction. More of an artistic rebirth than another incremental development in his sound, Endgame expands on the hypnotic, minimal direction of last year’s singles for Workshop and his own Lovers Rock label, techno that fluttered and rustled like moulting trees in an early autumn breeze. While previous albums Hive Mind and Dream On were characterised by a slightly chaotic collage of sounds and sensations, Endgame is a deeper, more sophisticated set of tracks with nods to classic minimalist composition, the full-bodied sounds of Basic Channel, and the stripped-back Detroit sounds of Robert Hood, Jeff Mills and Terrence Dixon.
Despite these reference points, Endgame is blanketed in a uniquely alluring gloom, one that cloaks most of Martin-McCormick’s previously colourful tones. That’s not to say Endgame is a jet-black techno album, but his brighter inclinations feel more like glints of light reflected in the dark than the technicolour vistas he created on Hive Mind, something presumably created by his recent experience with psychedelics. On opening track “Relaxer”, a synth licks and crackles with blue static, rippling like a sky gone pink from too much LSD, while the synths that make up “Concussion” ripple like the corona of an imagined celestial body. Despite this, it’s still an album whose sound is firmly tied to the dance floor; “Endgame” may end up caught in deft tonal swirl recalling the minimalist synth work of David Borden, but the subdued house stabs and breezy percussion are a reminder this is an album built out of Martin-McCormick’s experience delivering hardware live sets in clubs.
Martin-McCormick certainly isn’t the first producer to blend a tapestry of psychedelic textures with club rhythms, but it’s rarely executed as maturely as it is on Endgame. Blending this sonic direction with the same sensuality that characterised early tracks like “Queens” and “Culture Clubs”, he creates music evoking the feeling of being in a club rather than just music to be played at a club. The disembodied vocal chatter of “Whispers In The Dark” for example creates the sensation of being blanketed in darkness while a vivid techno pulse booms from a Funktion One, while “White II” slowly intensifies as if floating from one room to another.
While McCormick’s vision of techno is one influenced by more conventional artists like Function, Endgame seems like an attempt to evoke a totally non-corporeal experience. “Beacon” encapsulates this best; a stunning seven minutes arriving just after the album’s half-way point, it sees a low pass filter slowly applied to the track’s tactile synthetic gurglings to the point where it becomes almost entirely inaudible, and the chaotic feelings of the club fade away to be replaced with the sensation of being cocooned inside a flotation tank. His music may be darker than it’s ever been, but it’s still just as emotive.
Above all, Endgame is an impressively realised album, one that shows Martin-McCormick is as good as any of his peers weaving house and techno into strange shapes. “Oche” for example feels as strange and sumptuous as the music of Joey Anderson, while “Black Dust” bubbles over with all the atmosphere and physical sub-bass of the best Kassem Mosse material. “I started Ital with no expectations, and I think the early Silk 12”s conveyed the excitement I felt hijacking this genre that, until then, I had admired from afar,” Martin McCormick told this site in a recent interview. “But once I got in there, I realized how much more could be done.” While Martin-McCormick has always been aware of his position as someone who has approached dance music from a slightly different angle, Endgame shows he’s clearly quite comfortable with that, but more importantly, he’s found the focus to create the kind of material that stands up with the best.
Scott Wilson
Tracklisting:
1. Relaxer
2. Endgame
3. Whispers In The Dark
4. Coagulate
5. Dancing
6. Concussion
7. Beacon
8. White II
9. Black Dust
10. Oche