INNER8 - Inner8

On a label like Stroboscopic Artefacts one could spend rivers of words without perhaps ever truly hitting the mark. Reiterating that it's one of the most original protagonists of the contemporary post-techno scene (because that's what it is) is at once superfluous, obvious and sufficient here, where however much of the spirit that has animated the label is found condensed in the solo debut of one of its two founders. Inner8 is in fact the first step outside Dadub for Daniele Antezza, who has always been the more reflective and conceptual half of the duo.

The best way, and perhaps the only possible one, to begin an examination of a work as dense, hermetic and multi-perspectival as his first album is to take a look at the name of the project itself (and of the record), where the 8 symbolizes, by the author's own admission, the idea of infinity. Inner, in turn, pinpoints and announces the object of the research, namely interiority itself. Inner infinity – to use a clunky paraphrase – is essentially the point of arrival, the conclusion after a journey in which mind and body, reflection and perception, thought and listening proceed hand in hand.

On the back cover of the CD version, Antezza places a review/analysis that tends to guide the reflective side toward certain key points – an aspect that for once deserves almost more attention than the musical one, by the author's own choice, and not because of the usual "literary bias" with which those who work in words describe and judge the arts. Some of these points are the same ones anyone would find within the record itself: the attraction to contrast and paradox, the "discovery" of the multiplicity of planes of inquiry, recurring themes such as inner struggle, temptation, violence and the obsession with power.

These words effectively capture what the musical content of the album actually is: a post-techno blend in which the fast, monolithic rhythm of escape gives way to the slower, more hypnotic one of introspection. The monochrome of techno in the strict sense gives way to a vast scale of greys, smudged just as on the cover: restless, mechanical drones, post-industrial meditations, fragments of field recording from sacred and profane places coexist in a soundscape that musically sums up everything expressed above in words.

The regressive hypnosis à-la–Demdike Stare of "Daimon Anthem", the repressed hysteria of "Praxls" not far from Perc, the bombardments of brain waves and then adrenaline of the two "The Irony Of Karma" tracks already tell, from their titles alone, stories of demons and exploitation, as well as the renewed topicality of the dialectic between resignation and the Dionysian spirit. This oscillating pendulum finds a way to stop at times on one side (the rock-crushing cage of "The Paradox Of Authority"), at times on the opposite one (the controlled intoxication of "Exploitation").

In certain passages, the narrative pauses to make direct room for the scenarios themselves and their sonic testimony: this is the case with the Orwellian proclamation of "Violence" or the spiritual nullification within the non-environment of "Disambient", but also with that "Exertion" which seems to design a dancefloor reserved exclusively for machine-men. In a kind of macabre coexistence between hope and consciousness, a few shafts of light manage to break through only in the drone odysseys placed at the start and end, corresponding to the twin tracks "Eudaemonia" and "Moto Asintotico",

The latter close the circle, bringing to completion the reflection on the various vantage points from which to observe this inner infinity, dominated by the constant oscillation of the aforementioned pendulum (which we might identify with awareness). Something that - as the beginning and end of the journey seem to suggest - contact with is frequently avoided, choosing instead to go on living in a limbo of illusions capable of "switching off" awareness itself, much as soma did in Huxley's "Brave New World", giving up one's own being in favor of a (fake yet genuine) happiness.

Antezza bears witness to his era through a precise, studied, millimetrically calibrated sonic cast. All of this by exploiting (and grinding, for the umpteenth time in its history, into crumbs) a language born and developed by tracing the contours - and with them the expectations, fears, suffering, joys, curiosities, in short the "inner infinity" - of its users: techno. And one that today captures a snapshot of a social universe grappling with a resurgence of (post-industrial) decadence, (dark) frustration, (trip) alienation, fear to be fought (esotericism), and the search for a consciously illusory escape route: techno, precisely.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

09/09/2015