Egisto Sopor is from Rome, which is a fantastic place to be from if your art is chiefly concerned with the past. He's been hanging around under his Polysick guise since 2010, releasing CD-Rs and tapes for labels like 100% Silk, aligning him with a group of underground-oriented analog fetishists currently mining 1980s dance music. Polysick's tracks are shorter and sparser than those of one-time labelmates Ital or Heatsick, and his debut album for Planet Mu, Digital Native, is full of proto-techno vignettes and swampy kraut ambles.
A mix that Sopor put together earlier this year for Electronic Explorations featured tracks by Italian soundtrack composer Piero Umiliani, Drexciya, and 808 State, artists whose music triangulates his sound better than any description could. The beats on Digital Native, when present, are simple, purposefully tinny, and respectful of the grid. His synthesizers have a homespun rigidity and they lean slightly to the left, like amateur carpentry. He loves squelchy, sour, acid-house timbres and stone-simple, early-Detroit constructions, a potent combination. Sopor is smart not to stuff his tracks; most of the time we're given a simple repeating arpeggio, a pattering beat, and another synthesizer acting as glaze. This leaves a lot of open air, and the best part about Digital Native is how easily it seems these elements could cast off like space junk at any moment.
What makes Sopor different from someone like Ital, though, is how explicitly he recreates the past. Digital Native has no hidden agenda and offers no commentary on technology or nostalgia. Since Sopor is not a preternaturally talented arranger or tunesmith, it's difficult to determine what, exactly, is being ventured during a moment when analog exploration is the de rigueur mode for underground composers. (The vintage stews offered by Panabrite and Pulse Emitter, for example, are meatier and more adventurous.) After its initial charms wear off-- and at 15 tracks and nearly an hour runtime, they will-- Digital Native slows to a dull plod. We're left with aural X-rays of Boards of Canada ("Lost Holidays") and molasses-slow, pixelated lounge music ("Gondwana").
Sopor has worked as a video producer and claims he makes his music to fantasized images. Digital Native is harmless analog tapestry, but it wilts under too much attention, unable to conjure the vivid scenes to which it was undoubtedly conceived. Sopor avoids careless mimicry-- he is not beholden to any one artist or style-- and there is plenty of potential in his blends. Digital Native, though, is too slight to truly honor, or build upon, its referents.
