Fabric 76
Fabric Records/fabric149
London’s tastemaking nightclub and record company Fabric are best known to Australians by their monthly mixtapes, released since November 2001. That’s 76 mixes to date, and the latest features Swiss DJ/producer Deetron, shuffling techno, house, nu disco, chillwave, and Brainfeeder-style IDM into a seamless 28-track set.
Deetron constantly shuffles classic techno, house, electropop elements into something quietly complex, both in the thickness of the layered samples and in the gentle manipulation of their textures at each level of the mix. That subtlety arrives at moments of enormous payoff, like when the faux horns and strings in Caribou’s Irene give way to the unbalanced whine of industrial saws in Joe’s Slope.
It’s a weird trip determined by what Deetron has called his ‘pleasure principle’, but unified by an overall leaning towards handclaps and high-pitched percussion, buzzy timbres, and almost inaudible sine pitches, sweeps, and vocals. It all culminates in Nils Frahm’s transcendent Says, almost antithetical to Johnny Blas’ cyber Cuban opener, Picadillo, and powerfully cathartic at that.
ZOE KILBOURN
