MONOKLE - Saints

After Christian Löffler and his dreamy techno, these pages welcome another find from the Ki Records roster. This time it's Monokle, a Russian artist from Saint Petersburg whose stylistic coordinates aren't too far from the German producer mentioned above.

We're still in the realm of electronic music tamed with enchanting restraint, modulated around a contained rhythmic drive that's never excessive or aggressive. A few years ago this would have been called dream-techno, and no definition was ever more fitting. The sweaty, funky, scientific soul of techno is fused here with velvety, soft, muted sounds, melodies and rhythms. The result, even if it feels a touch familiar, is wonderfully accomplished.

Over time, the songs manage to move the listener, drawing them in with a bittersweet flavour that fits perfectly within the atmosphere of a dystopian sci-fi film. Picturing desolate wastelands on the outskirts of a ruined metropolis, what else could you soundtrack it with if not tracks like “Homesick” or “Embers”? And there's plenty to enjoy right from the start with the classic arrangements of “Holt Found”, which flows ideally into the following “Glow”, where the same vocals are wrapped in playful synth figures.

The minimal-techno card also gets played with “Swan”, veering towards a disquieting ambient sound, with the track unfolding in a way that proves dynamic yet hushed, still adorned with a far-from-banal attention to melody. The rest of the album stakes its identity on the pensive, relaxed side of techno, setting aside complicated compositional geometries and exploring the beauty of sound through few, simple components. Nothing especially innovative, but executed with enormous passion and precision.

Within this imagery so removed from a conventional dancefloor context, there's also room for an extremely powerful single like “Slower”, this time not purely instrumental but bolstered by the voice of Nadya Gritskevich. A surprising techno-pop number packed with points of interest, between sampled counter-vocals, fragments of melody and deliciously rubbery synths, not to mention Gritskevich's (debuting) vocal cords, which prove genuinely very effective.

Electronic music needs fresh, talented elements to develop in a consistent and genuine way, so we can only praise the work done by the small, modest Ki Records, which keeps digging through the pile of new musicians to promote and support names with a sure future ahead of them, like Monokle. “Saints” is without a doubt one of the best debuts to come out in recent years, so don't let it pass you by.

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01/09/2013