Four months into the new year, the Japanese techno producer has already dropped two spacey yet sinister EPs for Berlin, contributed a live podcast mix to Resident Advisor, made the relentless acid cut “Adrenochrome” as part of the Bunker’s massive compilation 15 Years of the Bunker, and now returns to the Brooklyn imprint for another four-track release. Question and Answer may not be as focused and of-a-piece as Mood of the Machines, his standout 2016 EP for the label, but it shows just how much ingenuity and fresh new wrinkles Wata Igarashi can wring out of his Roland-909, Ableton and modular synth set-up.
“Outburst” opens the EP at full throttle, a menacing yet minimal piece of peak time techno that draws from the axis of techno masters like Jeff Mills and Kenny Larkin. As unrelenting as its kick is, the track soon reveals chasms of black space around every beat, with Igarashi making them feel even deeper and more disorienting, especially when the low end cuts out and you feel like you’re dangling in deep space, with a visceral sense of release washing over when the bass finally returns. It’s techno and EDM’s stock trick of the trade, yet Igarashi makes it feel compact yet expansive at the same time. Perhaps it’s thanks to Igarashi’s day job as sound producer on more commercial projects, there’s a crystalline yet never flashy exploration of what just a few sonic elements can do to the listeners’ perceptions.
With just a handful of elements—and at a slightly slower tempo than its predecessor—“Train of Thought” is nevertheless mesmerizing, liable to hijack your own on headphones. With destabilizing synth line, a slow arching sinewave and a ceaseless thump ever so subtly shadowed by a shaker, Igarashi builds the track up to a dizzying peak, to where it hits a cruising altitude four minutes in and stays aloft the rest of the way. “Broken Telephone” is similarly cautious in its build, a slow chugger that soon picks up some steam. And once everything is in motion, the 909 and the modular squiggles that Igarashi uses here bubble up like over-carbonated seltzer, making for a tingly sort of space that’s easy to get lost in.
The title track recently marked an early peak on Igarashi’s RA podcast and it remains a standout entry here. Full of clattering, metal-tinged percussion and an extreme arpeggio liable to make you vertiginous with its high peaks and valleys, it feels like a rollercoaster, the type of track that when deployed at the right moment can turn an underground techno party into a funhouse. A mix of hard percussion and ethereal effects swirling around at the periphery of perception, it’s these sorts of queasy, head-bewildering moments in Igarashi’s productions that reveal his knowledge of Jimi Hendrix and appreciation of psychedelic rock. Perhaps those are peculiar influences for a techno artist, but it’s what fellow producer Peter Van Hoesen called “the right amount of psychedelic sensibility” in his music. Even those averse to experimental techno will find plenty of moments to space out to here.
