19.6.08

Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer

Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer

I've recently been exploring Minimal Techno, a genre I have always struggled with in the past. I always find that some things need to be experienced in order. I've always enjoyed Drum and Bass as well as different producers who are generally labelled as IDM such as Aphex Twin (but everyone like Aphex Twin right? Even people who only listen to Punk and Metal seem to have a least some Richard James mp3s). Techno took me longer to understand however. I can remember labelling all 'dance' music 'too repetitive' which is kind of false (most Techno tracks don't have choruses and are much more dynamic than your average rock song) and yet kind of true. I can now see that repetitive isn't necessarily bad.

I can trace the musical path which lead me to Techno back to Dub. Dub lead me to Dubstep which lead me back to Garage and 2 Step which I had totally dismissed back when they were current. The precision and relentlessly on beat, light, almost fluttering sounds of 2 Step (in particular Horsepower Productions) taught me to see how minimal variations could seem like giant changes when backed by a steady 4 on the floor.

All of this leads me on to Fizheuer Zieheuer by Ricardo Villalobos. The album features just one track which is 37 minutes long. This is one song not a series of tracks mixed together. The drum track varies only slightly over the course of the song, in fact most of the song remains the same. A horn sample taken from a gypsy folk song enters after about 5 minutes and is looped, tweaked and cut in and out, sometimes in a very primitive fashion. It reminds me of mixing with tape decks: pausing and adjusting the speed of one element at a time.

The beats also vary over the course of the 37 minutes if only slightly. At certain points they seem to bounce off the walls and collide off of one another. When Villalobos accentuates the off beat it seems like a massive change of pace, in probably wouldn't seem so striking if you haven't heard the beat for over 10 minutes. A certain points the beat is run through some kind of echo chamber effect which briefly brings to mind Dub rhythms.

Philip Sherburne (who writes the excellent 'Month In Techno' Column for Pitchfork as well as his own blog) described the track's

"own interior dubscape (is) so minimally variegated as to be almost dizzying, like playing hopscotch on a moving sidewalk in zero gravity-- in a blizzard."
He goes on to say
"Villalobos finds perpetual motion in seeming stasis, using judicious filters and delay to ensure that no two bars are alike. His pinhead moonstomping is like the sonic version of micropsia, in which traditional perspective fails and objects lose their scale: echoes outgrow their sources and offbeats shadowbox their downbeats to death."
If that doesn't make you want to go out and find the track then I guess you just aren't ready to have your mind blown.