Hey techno and house dudes, learn to make a fucking album already. I like to bang but so does the bus; drop the snacks and dine me. Vitalic did it; Isolée did it sort of; I like that Schaffhaüser disc nobody talks about too; the boring middle section of the Juan MacLean record's brilliant; Daft Punk tried and failed unadmirably. Maybe albums are aren't your format or whatever-- bullshit.
Catch-22 maybe? Am I that much of a bastard? Of course, but Fraximal's plight is understandable. Kompakt's last few artist LPs have had trouble with mid-disc drag and some severe anxiety of influence, i.e. sounding too Kompakt, whatever that means. So we get albums with two or three good tracks and the rest personality- or statement-aspirant duds. Superpitcher, Mayer, Justus-- yeah, you guys, nice try, but what the fuck.
So here I am both relieved that Ferenc just made a solid, gimmickless 10-track techno album that just wants to be solid and gimmickless and 10-track, and utterly disappointed that it's merely that. I had the same problem with Allien's newie; Ferenc make better tracks though.
Presenting: "Diplodocus", which shuffles 2k2 through an ambient X-Filed slush, the fieber kept asteer by bright railroad spike clicks and, if you listen closely enough, an actual melody. That the track starts off the whole album strikes me as defiant and anti-trendy-- this ain't no party, this ain't no disco-- and the next tracks have their own back-to-mine moments too: the raven strings of "Sandia", the sub-bass predilection of "Neng"; the labby tabby rolls of closer "Acidorro".
If the duo didn't have a history of trendfucked hardcore-can, I wonder whether I'd take Fraximal for the dusty-futuro Nebuchadnezzar mothership it is, or just dusty and a little out of step, like a Matrix reference. The balance tips back and forth most during that middle run from "Bocaseca 1:0" to "France"-- through all is that warp-speed Basic Channel vibe I might have expected out of artists with a more fascist This Is The Real Shit agenda. Ferenc though are just two dudes stuck with a full-length deal, not one for five 12s; their music seems too good-hearted anyway and too merely good for a point, let alone world domination.
