A line from the ridiculously melodramatic but still quite enjoyable Godspeed You Black Emperor! track "Dead Flag Blues" goes, "We're all trapped inside the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death." You ever wondered what it sounds like inside of this horrible machine? Not GYBE!, I'll tell you that. The guitar tone is too warm, for one thing, and what kind of hemorrhaging death trap has violins? With Sprung, Canadian techno artist Andrew Duke has crafted one possible soundtrack.
Duke has been around for a while, but this album for French imprint Bip Hop is his first release to receive wide distribution outside DJ circles. Duke's m.o. is midnight black, clanging machine techno of the sort Richie Hawtin crafts when he's in the mood, and that Thomas Brinkman has perfected. Heavily inspired by the sounds of Detroit, Duke shares some of Drexciya's fascination with the techno/electro crossroads, but Duke's album is much further removed from the conventions of early hip-hop. Only the opening track, "Hell Yeah", is really electro proper, and here Duke remains fixated on the gloomy, mechanistic attributes of the genre, like Cybotron with a dense coat of drop-forge grime. No way a joyous b-boy could pop 'n' lock to this thing.
After this opening cut, Sprung takes a much more abstract turn. Most tracks are built on a series of highly repetitive loops that morph slowly over time, the patterns incorporating scrapes, hisses, and the occasional synth flourish. The recurring mental image I get when listening is the kind of comically complex machine Wile E. Coyote used to order from Acme, with dozens of dials, pipes, cords, wheels and other assorted devices popping out in every direction. With each new track, one of these massive top-heavy devices is set spinning, and as it wheezes and wobbles in place, the machine coughs up chunks of metal, fittings loosen, and fasteners give way. The racket swells and becomes chaotic before peaking and receding again.
There's no mistaking how alive these death sounds are-- due in part to Duke's feel for structure. The sense of pacing is something to behold, as the tracks on Sprung remain in a state of perpetual motion, always either building or falling apart. Despite the loop-driven nature of the composition, these tracks never seem static, and as far as albums go, Sprung certainly seems fully realized. Still, despite its merits, I have to say that it's not often that I'll want to listen to something this ice cold and bleak from start to finish. In some respects, the tension inside the music doesn't quite reach the pitch it could, since the overall mood never wavers from a punishing sense of desolation. A few shafts of light might have made the darkness blacker still. But if you're in the mood to climb into the rusty innards of that iron beast, this is your ticket.
