Yves De Mey

The Velocity Of Anguish

Genre: ELECTRONIC

CD (Compact Disc)

Boomkat Product Review:

'The Velocity of Anguish' is a single instrument experiment for Yves De Mey that prizes eldritch tonalities and rhythms from "a fairly renowned bass and lead module." Intricately engineered technoid futurism for anyone into Autechre, Mika Vainio or Rashad Becker.

We're not gonna claim to know the exact module De Mey uses on this one, but we'll leave it to the modular heads to work that out. Multitracking the instrument and piping it through loopers, spring reverb tanks and KOMA Elekronik's Field Kit "electro acoustic workstation", the veteran Belgian sound designer and composer grinds away its sonic fingerprints, concentrating his energy on offhand resonances, audio interference and ghost tones. It's a different approach than we heard on 'Exit Strategies Part I', where De Mey challenged himself to write broadly demonstrative presets for the Modor NF–1 synth. Here, the source feels less important than the processing - on 'Slidershut', rubber ball bass twangs snowball with white noise and microtonally skewed airlock drones, mimicking the motion of grinding Brum techno and slimming down some of the bulk. Lopsided kicks and snaps eventually counteract the fuzz, and De Mey again uses his source material to highlight his mixing desk sleight of hand, firing the sounds through reverb spirals and constantly morphing each element.

Techno lore is etched into the scenery of 'A Cue From The Child' too, when De Mey rolls a hard-EQed 4/4 kick over buzzsaw radio interference and a fractal synth sequence. Keeping its meter regular, De Mey hyperactively manipulates the shape of each thud, coughing out a noisy minimal-not-minimal backroom variant that beats without banging. On 'Inching', De Mey takes a leaf from the Pan Sonic playbook, electrocuting nauseous drones with live wired crackles and A/C hum, and his discrete processes are again poked towards center stage; dubby echoes and fluctuating glitch clusters take the spotlight, while the whirring industrial backdrop rumbles away in the distance. 'The Velocity of Anguish' is one of those sets that truly benefits from its slenderness; we know by now that De Mey is a gifted sound engineer - just check any of his releases on Editions Mego, Spectrum Spools, Opal Tapes or Sandwell District - and by restraining himself, his enigmatic skills are laid completely bare.

CD (Compact Disc) (6)