Ryan Lee West felt moved to a brief outburst back in August. The Leicester-born, London-based producer who makes music as Rival Consoles tweeted in protest of the ongoing boom of deep house, asking artists to quit contributing to the genre, currently in vogue. "There's probably enough to last us till 2089," he wrote.
West's ire makes sense, if only because the music he makes as Rival Consoles feels diametrically opposed to the luxuriant, lengthy bath evoked by deep house. West is a musical engineer in the mold of luminaries like Aphex Twin and relative newcomers like Dave Harrington, and the soundscapes he's constructed on his third LP, Howl, are spiky and imposing, too solid to sink into. The music is always shifting, so it's impossible to lose track of time while listening. You're always aware that any given composition is morphing, is in flux. Reams of electronic producers luxuriate in the safety of creating a comfortable atmosphere. But Howl is impossible to ignore, and hard to forget.
That's partly because West so often feels comfortable disrupting his own patterns. "Afterglow" seems as if it's going to build on an early synth loop, but what at first seems like the track's foundation turns out to be its foyer: halfway in, and suddenly we're in an entirely new room, one that's louder, brighter, more expansive. Our understanding of his pieces broadens as they move through time, so that once they're nearly over we apprehend the entire structure as if by a drone camera hovering above.
That vivid view is studded with allusions: the title track makes extraordinary reference to trains and tunnels, and at times the dusky track "Pre" recalls the snaking sounds of a film projector. West has said that he's a fan of "sloppy things and rough things happening in music," but even the little blips and isotopes here feel as if they've been cast in concrete, accidents granted purpose. In contrast to the last two Rival Consoles LPs, Howl was largely forged from hardware (as opposed to digital technology), and the record's analogue origins would be obvious even if you knew nothing about its genesis.
West is a labelmate of Nils Frahm and, this year alone, has toured with Clark and Nosaj Thing. He shares with all three the instincts of a classical composer*.* Howl's closer, "Looming", is a six-and-a-half-minute mini-epic that reflects the depth of emotion that West says he poured into Howl. But the catharsis it induces comes as much from the musician's restraint and sense of composure as anything else. What isn't there is as important as what is.
West's grumbling about deep house might make him seem like a dinosaur. But he doesn't seem bothered by its existence; he's complaining about a surplus, and, like a true progressive, his momentary gripe stands as mere prelude to more concerted action. His music—rocky, spiky, warm, titanic—drives us to re-evaluate whether referring to someone as a dinosaur might not be quite as pejorative as we thought.
