Florian Kupfer was once a choir boy. He was a soprano. For over six years, he practiced Gregorian chorals everyday and was surrounded by the aroma of frankincense. These rituals—mixed with an early introduction to ’90s techno from his mother—formed Kupfer’s anachronistic foundation. His brand of thoroughly low-fidelity techno evolved after meeting Ron Morelli of the label L.I.E.S., also known for his own very murky sounds. Since the release of his 2013 debut, Lifetrax, Kupfer has developed a style that flits between rhythmic industrial soundscapes (not unlike his onetime labelmate, Eric Copeland) and romantic ambient techno with a handmade feel. In his sixth release, Unfinished, he creates music as airy and pleasantly rudimentary as a papier-mâché sculpture.
*Unfinished *runs barely over 25 minutes. Composed of four tracks, it can feel much longer. Sonically speaking, Unfinished is a compromise between two of Kupfer’s best-known songs: the melancholic, R&B-inflected house hit of 2013’s “Feelin” (itself reminiscent of Galcher Lustwerk or DJ Richard) and his sublime 2015 flip of Sade’s “Couldn't Love You More.” In *Unfinished, *he’s more atmospheric than the industrial menace of 2015’s Explora, with its sharply exposed edges. *Unfinished *is, if anything, defined by a meandering and cleverly unfocused pace, allowing Kupfer to explore all the odd angles of a sound.
In the album’s opener, “Elle,” Kupfer showcases this album as strangely and pleasantly nostalgic. The song’s six minutes seem sourced from arcade-era video games, with computer approximations of guitar jangle and uneven drum machines. This continues into “Erika,” like a Huerco S track with its slithering but open progression. It’s the album’s longest track (over eight minutes) and it slinks slowly towards any kind of change, slathering on hissing and unravelling tape loop distortions for almost four minutes. It’s more ambient than anything else, even when it arrives at its modest crescendo—a chopped and screwed vocal sample of Monifah’s “Fairytales.” He adds bursts of bated and sometimes goofy percussion along with synth loops, but somehow these parts act independently of each other. The song is like a conglomerate of rough drafts, or a découpé of misshapen parts artfully put together.
What unites many of the song’s in *Unfinished *is the quality of something still being constructed, or figuring itself out. A sense of cohesion arises from the songs’ handmade and purposefully asymmetrical minimalism. Listening to some of the songs on *Unfinished *made me think of certain Clyfford Still paintings, with their organization of angles and colors that are off-kilter, distorted, but arranged with a sense of overwhelming texture rather than compositional logic. This is most present in “Being Me,” allowing its twinkling synth arpeggios and aggressive kick drums to float in space and crash into each other. *Unfinished *finds Kupfer gathering all the materials from his last three years of music-making to land on electronic music that is mercurial and flexible. Moving from ambient to house to techno to pure noise on a dime, Kupfer’s aesthetic is perfectly imperfect.
