The young Dutch electronic producer Pascal Terstappen has numerous assets, any one of which would be enough to build a strong aesthetic. He has a keen ear for melody, a terse, supple way with rhythm programming, and a sensitive dowsing rod for strange gems and ores hidden under timbral crust. His humid webs of synthetic tones and bass, drums, and treated voices are full of graceful curves and slants. Each intonation of a motif is unique as a piece of hand-blown glass. Best of all is his knack for startling, bafflingly perfect changes in tack, which is in fine form on Dreaming in Key, his new record as Applescal. His music's slippery momentum and Frankensteinian melodies seem designed to delight rather than unsettle. Among fellow deconstructive electronic musicians, he makes for a uniquely genial as well as interesting companion.
Loops are naturally, stubbornly additive, but Applescal's are so pliant that the music feels conscious, especially at points of transition-- prone to pausing and gathering itself before swirling into a new form. At the top of a long, warming rise, you're as likely to find a frosty plateau or a side-winding shift as a sheer drop. He's not interested in forward motion; instead, he develops overlapping concentric circles of melody and rhythm, like rain dappling water. With shades of Boards of Canada and Four Tet in its spacey melody and Morse code percussion, "Onetasker" teases at catharsis before finally unleashing one huge, woozily droning chord. The percolating beginning of "Vintage Clown / Shadow Hunters" abruptly slumps into a post-R&B vocal fantasy, which is gradually split open by geysers of molten synths. The stellar "On the Way" starts at an oozy lope but ends in a glorious pile of marbled, backmasked melody, making the old technique feel fresh.
Applescal is profligate but consistent with genre: He likes to combine springy tech house arpeggios, intrepid harmonic explorations, and tilted minimalist percussion with hefty ambient stuffing and a sparkly veneer of 90s IDM. It's mind/body music in the lineage of James Holden's Border Community label output, seeping fluidly between kinetic ecstasy and moody solitude. Applescal's versatility and vision caused his prior records to meander sometimes, bogged down by surplus ability and eagerness. That's what makes this more sharply focused third LP a great entry point-- though it wouldn't be Applescal without a certain amount of meandering. He vamps well, working filters and oscillators the way a jazz keyboardist works a modal scale. But his music is most compelling at its most structured, when he carefully draws different elements into uncanny wholes. The best example is still 2010's "Dialeague", where the warmest, most thickly rolling drones and the coldest, thinnest swirl of notes breathe in unison, though it's now rivaled by "On the Way".
As an opener, "Boys" is intriguing but limited in scope, with exhalations and hisses atomized over exfoliating arpeggios and locomotive drums. The live version of "El Diablo" is a little too like Ratatat for comfort, and closer "Keep on Dreaming" feels like an afterthought. But everything else on Dreaming in Key is rich, vivid, and full of surprises. The dreamy "Lonely People" draws songful metallic pulses into an almost fugue-like structure, while the visceral "Spring and Life" has a bassy carved-out menace recalling Booka Shade's "Darko". Standout "Wise Noise on Time" channels Pantha du Prince with its tinkling, starry variations, but not before a ghostly melodic line suddenly leaps up to a squeal and hangs there, forming a yawning chasm around a steely bass. Among heavy competition, it's one of my favorite "Applescal moments" so far, the kind where a solid form seems to be pulled out of thin air.
