It really shouldn't follow that a sound rooted in picking and choosing the elements of another established genre would be more fruitful than its blueprint. Subtraction is supposed to be about deduction, isn't it? Musically, one would think it would whittle away elements of a sound and reduce sonic possibilities. Yet by turning down the bombast and thrust of house, producers have been able to explore the space between its rhythm and melody and revel in the push and pull of placing delicate, avant-glitch alongside oft-direct melodies and regimented beats. The result is that microhouse has been one of the more durable, inclusive sounds of the past few years.
On Tobias Thomas' mix Smallville, he illuminates microhouse's gentle shading by artfully constructing a mix that goes from a whisper to, not a scream but certainly a clamor, without any neck snapping. Smallville is Tobias Thomas' second mix for Kompakt, following 2000's Für Dich, which featured Wolfgang Voight (Gas), Lali Puna, Vladislav Delay (Luomo), and Crane A.K, among others. This time the mix is far from primarily Cologne-based, or even a purely German sound: Smallville includes producers from upwards of six countries.
There are few actual Kompakt releases here-- and not everything is even proper microhouse-- but they all share the label and sound's basic aesthetic. The diversity of the record ranges from Dntel's hushed vocals and acoustic-electronic shuffle to the tasteful, understated four-on-the-floor of Cologne "supergroup" Forever Sweet (Voight, Thomas, and Michael Mayer). Taken as individual tracks they could seem disparate and unsettling, but under Thomas' skilled hand the mix gradually unfolds like a sunrise.
Rather than treat the genre as microbic, Thomas takes a microscope to it, highlighting the nuance of these tracks by allowing them to subtlety build on one another. Dntel opens the set with "Season", a fragile, yawning acoustic-electronic gem. The spirit of Dntel's genre-blending is made more explicit when it feeds into a delicate mashup of Kaito's pillowy, beatless ambient-trance pearl "Release Your Body" and the vocals of Erlend Øye's "Ghost Train", a track from the Kings of Convenience singer's debut that was originally produced by Metro Area's Morgan Geist.
Much of the rest of the record's first half is a blend of click-house and the soothing washes of sound found on the Pop Ambient series. Here the delicate skips of Andres Ilar's "Onehow" and the glitch-dub of Sten's "Asami" peak with the album's psuedo-centerpiece, Jan Jelinek's "Tendency". Jelinek's first single released under his own name, "Tendency" was also featured on Loop-finding-jazz-records. Here Jelinek's trademark pops and cuts act as a revolving door, fluidly separating the focus on texture and atmosphere of the first half of the record from the bass and rhythm of its second side.
As arranged by Thomas, the mix's other producers seem to take "Tendency" as a starting point and either bury deeper into Jelinek's enveloping sound or step back and click their heels over increasingly pronounced rhythms. Those more traditional house sounds pepper the second half of Smallville, which includes more melodic, 4/4 structures, as evidence by tracks from artists on more hyperkinetic labels as Shitkatapult (Sami Koivikko), Tresor (Aril Brikha), and Bpitch Control (Feadz).
Thomas indicates that he had a specific intent in mind when he created the record, calling Smallville a "musical try to compare the structures of living in small communities with the restrictions and possibilities of the dance community." Hey, that's super. There really isn't much to clue the listener in on that information here-- instead the wide range of sounds allows a wide range of listener responses. What is clear, however, is that this is a dance mix arranged for doing the standing still, crafted as for solitary moments. It's a record that starts with brittle bedsit intimacy and, once its hooks unfold, just might soundtrack a solo bounce around your room.
