Dance music fans stirring the tea leaves for signs of a minimal-house revival might have been heartened by Chosta-del-sol, a 2022 EP from British producer Jorg Kuning. The record called back to the Y2K-era style in both its blippy tones and lithe, slinky grooves; the title track felt like a deliberate invocation of Isolée’s 1998 hit “Beau Mot Plage,” mimicking its tightly wound movements, detuned streaks of melody, and even punningly beachy title. Kuning, based in the rural market town of Welshpool, Wales, has been turning out baubly, idiosyncratic dance music since 2019, much of it on his own Bakk Heia label, filtering the ping and squelch of classic minimal into a contemporary sound that’s his alone. His new mini-LP Elvers Pass—his second for London’s Wisdom Teeth, the leftfield dance label that released Chostsa-del-sol—gathers some of his most intricate and inventive music yet.
Kuning’s music has long been immediately recognizable for its vivid colors and crisp lines, and he dials up the definition on Elvers Pass. The first sound we hear is the rich, resonant thunk of a log drum tapping out a playful bassline; in contrast to that reassuringly corporeal low end, a welter of trebly details—plinky electric keys, gaseous squiggles, silvery ribbons of pitched-up voice—make opening track “Mercedes” feel like a slow-motion video of a confetti cannon erupting.
The record’s palette drips with humor. Kuning’s modular patches chirp and whistle with giddy abandon, resembling squeak toys, whoopie cushions, quacking ducks. His madcap doots and blorps, which could well have been ripped straight from the pages of Mad magazine, often feel like the inverse of onomatopoeia: nameless sounds that aspire to the quality of language. The cartoonishness is right there in titles like “Squidward’s Viola” and “Synthetic Squashies”; every corner of the music is populated by hyperkinetic objects and characters. “Teen Frogue,” set against a backdrop of shimmery FM chimes and robotic vowel sounds, is a case in point: First comes a jaunty mallet melody reminiscent of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Riot in Lagos”; it cedes the way to a bumptious synth riff, pecking at the ground like a drunken bird; finally, a theremin-like lead takes the spotlight, vibrating with comically exaggerated tremolo. It feels like a runway procession for radio-controlled gizmos run amok.
Elvers Pass’s beats are rooted in the wiggly syncopations of labels like Perlon and artists like Akufen, Zip, and Baby Ford, but they differ from classic minimal in their elasticity. Four-on-the-floor kicks drive “Skudde” and “Squidward’s Viola,” but for the most part these grooves eschew such rigid timekeeping, drawing instead from the hiccup of electro and the fidgety bursts of IDM. Kuning is continually tightening and loosening screws, searching for ways to fine-tune the groove. Every eight or 16 bars, there’s a subtle shift in energy levels, often thanks to nothing more dramatic than a new hi-hat or a subtle filter tweak. And his arrangements are more elaborate than those of classic minimal, which was often content to shuffle along with little variation, lost in the hypnosis of the loop. In “Mercedes,” the bassline never changes, but there’s a clear shift halfway through as a plangent synth lead assumes center stage, followed by a zither-like patch and then a plucky synthetic harp; it’s structured almost like a jazz ensemble, with each voice taking a turn.
He does something similar at the climax of “Squidward’s Viola,” when cybernetic frogs and loons suddenly clear the path for a soaring viola solo. It’s a striking moment: Here at the heart of a carefree and occasionally rambunctious record, he brushes aside all the goofiness in favor of an exceptionally lyrical passage of deep, plaintive feeling. A minimal revival has been underway for a while, but it’s gambits like these that set Elvers Pass apart. Kuning’s well aware of what’s come before, but he seems far more interested in where he might go next.
