The pictures that accompany LuckyMe's entries in the Glasgow-based imprint's solid mix series feature women, mostly captured at club nights and parties-- eating cupcakes, wearing garish corpse paint, pretending to eat money, and so forth. (The women featured in the photos are credited and "thanked," presumably to make it explicit that exploitation is not the name of the game.) The message is clear, then: LuckyMe are all about good times, and in 2012, the increasingly hip label's had a few reasons to keep the taps flowing. Several productions from canny dance cipher Machinedrum's EP released at the top of the year, SXLND, were used as backing tracks by perpetually buzz-cresting mer-rapper Azealia Banks; just last month, LuckyMe joined Warp in co-releasing the self-titled debut EP from Hudson Mohawke and Lunice's TNGHT project, a forward-thinking document that captures the increasingly blurred lines between dance and hip-hop. All things considered, a pretty good year so far.
So there's quite a few eyes (and ears) on what LuckyMe's next move is, and as it turns out, it's a bit of a curveball: the debut release from Vienna musician Clemens Bächer, who twiddles the knobs as Cid Rim when not collaborating with fellow Austrian beatmaker Dorian Concept. Bächer's a percussionist by trade who tutors and performs in the free jazz realm for a living, so it follows that his productions are heavy on rhythmic patterns that sound slightly off-kilter and disorienting. Snatches of organic fills stud the background of "Six Hundred"'s punchy synths, while "A Fall Four Two" is practically a drum kit solo in slow-motion, with warm tones and what sounds like mallet instruments filling out the leftover space. In Bächer's hands, almost every instrument-- right down to the high-contrast synths and vocal samples smattered throughout the record-- turns into a weapon of rhythmic assault. At times, it's fun to lose yourself in his beat maps, even if the migraine-causing potential while listening is frequently high.
Ironically, for all its relative busyness and occasional aggressive textures, Bächer's work feels very small in stature. Maybe this is partially because, despite its running time of 36 minutes, LuckyMe has branded this release as a "micro-album." Even doing away with what people are calling this thing, though, Cid Rim often sounds handmade and intimate, a more playful variation on what comes from the bedroom-IDM types that make up the roster of U.S. boutique Ghostly International. Even the boldest-sounding material here-- the upward build of "Manage Expectations", "Danger Ranger"'s vocal swarm-- carries an air of restraint, as if it's sitting on a bench near a cliff instead of standing on the edge. The prevailing narrative that's emerged in the last 12 months when concerning Bächer's peers is that of maximalism, where productions most closely resemble setting off an entire fireworks display all at once. While there's plenty going on with Cid Rim, the sense of closeness and propriety makes it out of step in the current landscape, an admirable facet that suggests Bächer's not afraid to march to the step of his own drum kit.
Still, it says something that the standout on Cid Rim is not an original production, but a remix of the album's leadoff cut, "Draw", courtesy of Dorian Concept. DC's remix first appeared on Rustie's scene-defining BBC Essential Mix earlier this year, and among the two hours of total aural insanity, it was definitely a highlight, so it's a total treat (and worth the price of purchase alone) to hear the cut's cartoonish, boss-mode synth stomps-- which sound so sharp and tangy, while retaining plenty of menace-- coated in non-radio-rip HD glory that does it justice. Bächer should take heed, though, that it's not necessarily a good look to be shown up at your own function, so maybe the next time around he'll adopt some crude brashness of his own.
