Mikkel Meldgaard has a name that sounds like it belongs to a Tolkein character and a vision of techno that's as bloodyminded as anyone's. At some point in the 1990s, Meldgaard must have had his wig seriously pulled back by the wriggling, static-ridden, techno-as-lifeform that came out of the Basic Channel camp. Since roughly the beginning of the decade/century/millennium, he's been panning for gold in the silty stream of post-BC dub techno; his releases on his own label Echocord, Kompakt, and others have delighted at the subtle variations in texture of rustling noise over deep basslines and functional beats. If anyone wanted to remake Woman of the Dunes, Meldgaard's slowly shifting grainscapes would be the perfect soundtrack to being buried alive in a sandlot.
So as you might expect, Victimizer doesn't deviate broadly from his comfort zone; it could only be further from 2006's disco baubles and hygienic neo-trance if he actually started sending his singles into the world smeared with peat and moss. Like the furthest reaches of what-we-used-to-call-microhouse-but-doesn't-really-have-a-name-now-- Jan Jelinek's Farben productions, the recent work of Ricardo Villalobos-- Meldgaard's music is "dance" because there are beats buried under the textural slurry. But unlike the crunching, bristling rhythms of Basic Channel or even the oomph of Chain Reaction, Meldgaard's beats are too limp to push anyone around a dancefloor. You can rock back and forth to it. Maybe.
But Victimizer differs just enough from the earlier Close Selections to justify its existence. Most notably, there are the peals of guitar that swell and sag like deflating balloons, the instrumental aftertaste of a goth record that's been abstracted to a handful of gestures. Vocals are dubbed until all that's left is the residue around the rim, a free floating vapor, or a low-res moan heard creepily through apartment walls. The bass continues to provide the barest possible forward momentum. But more than anything, Meldgaard is interested in bitmapping the mix until it nearly dissolves. It's no surprise that he has a history of playing in shoegaze bands before discovering techno, but his work as Mikkel Metal is hairy, shaggy, and dirty in a way that the candied guitars of shoegaze rarely were. If Swamp Thing got down, Victimizer would be his soundtrack.
