Sometimes it doesn't take much to pry open a door into the music world. Even a brief flash of inspiration can get you there. Take Alex Burkat, a Brooklyn-based electronic musician, now part of Amanda Brown's house-y Not Not Fun offshoot, 100% Silk. The story goes that Burkat was out dancing at a Mister Saturday Night party, where he was so inspired that he sent the organizers his "Shower Scene" track. It became as his first single on the Mister Saturday Night label, with "Tarot" providing a quick follow up. With "Tarot", there were already signs of progress since "Shower Scene", signs of dialing down of the epic tendencies of that track, a sense of getting comfortable working on a smaller patch of turf. The difference in the two records is like seeing a career in miniature, with a more robust vision in place after barely any time has passed.
Burkat is still that guy caught up in the jubilation of clubland, but the tracks that make up Tarot hint at how those experiences stimulate reflection as well as hands-in-the-air euphoria. It's on the experimental end of downtempo house, although it never gets too far out there, instead settling into solid grooves that sometimes mirror the mood of Pantha du Prince's benchmark Black Noise. There are three tracks here plus "Tarot (Global Warming Mix)”, which adds a decent amount of steel to its framework. The varieties in mood are all tied up in a form of future dreaming, with Burkat constructing work that increasingly trepidates as it progresses. It's softer than something like Kuedo's Severant, but takes its mood from similar sources, interlacing a strand of Ballardian doom as its central aesthetic.
It's an EP that steadily plummets into sci-fi fears as it progresses, suggesting Burkat was mindful of spinning a mini-narrative through these works-- "Tarot" is comparatively bubbly when stacked up against the knuckle-dragging bass welts of "Four Seasons". Still, there's a feeling that Burkat hasn't figured out exactly where he's going yet, especially when viewing the wildly gimmicky video for "Tarot". Patched together from iPhone photos, some altered through Instagram filters, the clip feels more suited to cheap seaside punk nostalgists than the Brave New World thinking conjured up by the track itself. The Global Warming mix returns a layer of mystery, adding a loop of digital glitch that mostly removes "Tarot" from the joyous territory the original skirts around, instead depositing it into a space that fits with the moodier other tracks.
These are still early days for Burkat and it's likely that he's still figuring out where he wants to go; certainly the change in style from the wide-open "Shower Scene" to the techno-mope of "Last Cigarette" is vast. But there's enough on this EP to suggest he'd be wise to stick around down there, making the kind of dance music that alternates between staring-at-your-shoes miserablism and trancey floor fillers. On "Last Cigarette", he gets the switch from one to the other exactly right, spending half the track lost in anticipation, the midway point's payoff hitting a perfectly transportative note. Now Burkat just needs to figure out where he wants to take his audience all the time, because with cheesy cut-and-paste videos at one end and immersive future gazing at the other, it's clear that his vision needs a little tightening.
